Marinated Grilled Salmon

Hello friends! Today we are taking our first venture down one of my favorite routes - grilled fish. I love fish and shell fish, and I really only like fish prepared two ways - fried and grilled. Fried is great for a cheap fish like whiting or flounder, but for something like Salmon, to me the only way is to grill it up.

Now I have made grilled salmon many, many times, but you are in for a special treat today, because this grilled salmon I prepared last week was the best salmon I've ever made. If you haven't been able to guess by my rubs and BBQ sauce, I'm very high on the accessory flavors which accommodate my favorite foods. I have prepared grilled salmon naked, with homemade marinade, with a glaze, and just grilled with some lemon juice and rosemary. All of these are good solutions, but let me tell you, I have found my new way to make grilled salmon.

We are in the process of moving, so we have been trying to get rid of things in the cabinet and cold storage, and this was the perfect opportunity to try out some World Harbours Mojo Sauce that I had purchased a couple of months ago. I bought it specifically with fish in mind, but we had never gotten around to using it.

The preparation was very simple - I had four, four ounce filets of wild caught salmon that I put into a deep and wide dish for marinating. I then poured the Mojo Sauce into the container, which was the perfect amount as all of the filets were perfectly covered. My original intention was to let it marinate for about 2-3 hours, but the weather got bad, so I had to wait until the next day.

Salmon on the grill... always good.

The next day, after the filets had been marinating for approximately 28 hours, I pulled them out. I fired up the grill, and preheated it for the highest setting. Once the grill was nice and toasty I put the filets on. I immediately noticed that the acid in the marinade had already begun to break down the salmon a little, which made it slightly flimsier than normal. Luckily I got the salmon on the grill in tact and let it cook for about 5-7 minutes. I then flipped the salmon, and let it cook for another 3 minutes or so. The salmon was tender, juicy, not overdone, but completely cooked throughout.

We paired it with a simple rice dish I had prepared which contained corn, roasted red pepper, garlic, and tomato. Unfortunately we were out of lemon juice, and not in a position to buy more with the impending move, the rice was missing that punch to really pair it with the salmon.

Just before flipping, don't let it break apart!

Anyway, we plated it up, and it was absolutely delicious. The marinade gave the fish a very complex flavor. It had a strong citrus profile with some sweet tacked in there, but not so much as to make it too sweet or fruity. The meal was delicious, and we were extremely surprised and pleased with how everything came out. The only thing I would change is the marinade time, which I will try to keep at around 12 hours next time, just to make sure it doesn't prematurely break down the fish.

This is a great recipe, and for you everymen out there, it is SUPER easy to do. Just make sure to start marinating in advance, and with 10-15 minutes of grilling time you will have the main course for your meal. I really recommend pairing it with rice and fresh veggies, but you could put this salmon with almost anything and it would still be amazing! Best of all, the marinade can be found at almost any grocery store.



Cheers!

Campground Smoking: The Portable Smoker Debut Part 2 of 2

After the somewhat disappointing debut of the Brinkman on the ribs, I was extremely hesitant about smoking pork shoulder for both of our parents for Alicia's birthday. Pork shoulder is one of those items that takes a long time to smoke, and if not done properly can come out in a manner very opposite of what you have anticipated. Also, my buddy Jacob had recently purchased the Brinkman and told me that his Boston butt had not come out good. Needless to say, I had some reservations about doing this for an occasion of this magnitude.

Campsite Smoker Setup

That said, I decided that since the ribs had not turned out like I intended, I would start the smoker early - about 8:00am, and that I would use the Texas Crutch the entire time. For those of you not familiar, the Texas Crutch is when you wrap your cut in aluminum foil tightly to prevent any loss of moisture. It almost steams the meat with its own juices.

I'll be honest - I'm not a big fan of the Texas Crutch from the beginning because I don't like soppy food, and to be honest, it feels a little bit like cheating. Also, if you use the crutch from the beginning, you lose essentially all of the bark that you get when you smoke without it. Some people don't like bark - particularly those who think big chains have good BBQ. I on the other hand am a big fan, and felt as though using the Texas Crutch was essentially taking the lesser of two evils in this case.

Anyhow, with the smoker going, I gave a small dose of mesquite chips once everything was up to temp. I tightly wrapped the butt and threw it on the smoker. I was a bit nervous, but it was Alicia's birthday, so we spent the day boating around the lake, fishing, and spending time together in the beautiful weather. I came back to check on the meat a couple of times, at four hour intervals. The Brinkman held it's temp surprisingly well.

At about the six hour mark, the coals had begun to die off, and the meat was far from done. This is where the largest shortcoming of the Brinkman is. It has a tiny trap door you see, on the side, under the water pan where the charcoal goes. This is just big enough to be annoying, because you can see the area you'd like to add coals to, but there is hardly anything you can do with it. The other problem is, in order to remove the ash and old coals, you have to take the entire smoker apart; ie - remove the meat, remove the rack, remove the water pan, and then you are stuck reaching 2 feet down into a hot smoker trying to pull out a tray of hot coals - Not your best option!

So, I took a gamble, lit a chimney, and let it get to temp. I then, carefully (read: painstakingly!) removed the coals from the chimney one by one and placed them into the remaining small gaps in the charcoal basket with long tongs. Several times my hands got very hot and I had to take a break because I didn't have mitts since we were camping. I did however manage to get basically all of it in there after about 30 minutes.

While I did lose some cooking time there, the temp had not fallen off completely, and it was back up to operating temperature almost immediately after the charcoal transplant procedure. At this point, people were starting to come over to our campsite and socialize. I told them dinner would be ready around six.

----

Despite it's definite downfalls, it came through for me this time!

I was finally able to pull the butt off the smoker at around 6:30. There was no bark. It instantly reminded me of a pot roast. I was mortified. My initial thought was to put the meat directly on the smoker and ramp up the mesquite one last time to try to give it some consistency. The problem was the meat was so tender it was falling apart and that wasn't going to work. Instead, I chose to unwrap the aluminum foil, leave just enough for relocation purposes, and smoked the heck out of it.

After about 20 minutes of this, I pulled the meat off and let it rest for a brief period of time. Once I began to pull the meat, it literally shredded apart like nothing was holding it together. Further, the induction of the final hard smoke outside of the aluminum foil had firmed it up enough and wicked away enough moisture that it no longer felt like a pot roast.

We served the pork with homemade cucumber salad, garden salad, and macaroni and cheese. The pork was served with my Western NC BBQ sauce, normal and spicy versions, and with my Eastern NC BBQ sauce which is what my dad prefers - it is vinegar based.

It was a big success, everyone liked the BBQ, and to be honest, I thought it was awesome. Despite all the anxiety I had over using the Brinkman and under or overcooking or over or under moist were thrown to the wayside when people came back grabbing more BBQ and more sauce. They were amazed that all the sauce we had was homemade because it was so good they said!

The day was a success, and the Brinkman really pulled through. With some painstaking procedure, and a little ingenuity on my part the Brinkman really pulled it out. I'd design a few things differently, things that probably would even raise the cost of production much, but for a cheap smoker it really did great. I was more than surprised that everything came out as well as it did.

Most importantly, Alicia had a wonderful birthday, and our parents first meeting was a great success. They got along really well and I think everyone had a good time. Maybe next time we meet we should do BBQ again, just to make sure everyone stays in a good mood :)

Till next time folks!

Campground Smoking: The Portable Smoker Debut Part 1 of 2

Alicia's birthday was just a few weeks ago, and we decided to take a few days off work and have a nice long camping trip. We had friends come and go while we were out there visiting, but on her big day, both our sets of parents came out to meet each other for the first time! Before you think this is a blog on the knot, and that I have forgotten what universe I am in, I'll let you know now that everything went great at their first meeting, and leave it at that.

Back to what you are here for: the food. Well, prior to this trip, against my better judgment I purchased the Brinkman Smoke N' Grill from Walmart.  For some reason, the price right now is substantially higher than what I paid, which was less than $40. I figured if it was terrible I could at least use it as a raw project and make it the way I wanted by modification. I was primarily concerned with the fact that it had no options for modulating temperature as there was no damper for either air intake nor exhaust. I was a bit worried since I was smoking a small butt for our families and this was to be the only entree for Alicia's birthday meal, and the smoker was completely untested. We devised a plan before we went camping, and I decided to make some ribs the night before I did the butt.

Ribs take substantially less time to cook properly than a Boston butt, and my hope was that I could get at least a good feel for the smoker with our test run. I started with a rack of pork spare ribs, rubbed down in my rub blend, and let the smoker get up to temp. Well, up to temp in whatever sense of the phrase there was, since the only 'thermometer' on this thing is a "Warm-Ideal-Hot" gauge that is almost worthless.

Anyhow, I got the ribs going, and they smoked for about 4 hours. I had no temp gauge on the smoker and forgot my meat thermo, so I had to eyeball it. I applied my Western NC BBQ sauce to the ribs about 30 minutes before I pulled them off.

A couple of observations about the smoker: 1) It is not large enough to fit a single rack of ribs - so I had to cut them in half, a thought I despise. 2) Despite the lack of temperature control through dampers, I honestly think the temperature was roughly where it should be, and it just stuck there. 3) The saving grace of the unit is the water pan, it's the only thing that prevents the incredible heat from the charcoal from scorching your food; which makes 4) the unit useless as a two rack unit. It can be setup with two racks for food, but I don't see how it's possible to use it with two racks and not destroy the food on the bottom rack.

Anyhow - so we ate the food and...

Unfortunately, it felt as though the meat did not thoroughly break down to sufficient levels while on the smoker. It was definitely done, but the ribs felt a bit rubbery, and lacked the normal consistency which I am accustomed to on the home smoker. They tasted okay, they seemed to lack some smoke for the amount of wood chips I had put in, but they were edible, and I learned some useful information for the next day.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures, and please stay tuned for the conclusion of this Two Part Series on The Portable Smoker. You won't want to miss it.

Grilled BLTs Spice up an Old Favorite!

I have been dreadfully neglectful of my blog for the past several months. It was close to abandonment, but over the last month I've actually had several people who I didn't realize were reading it mention it to me. So, with my greatest of apologies, I am going to make a more concerted effort to keep things coming!

Now that the business of apologizing is out of the way, Grilled BLTs!

This time of year we have fresh tomatoes on our plants, to the point that we can barely eat them fast enough. Making salsa, using them in salads (particularly the tiny ones), used as a burger condiment - these are all great uses and viable options for disposing of our tomato stockpile. My personal favorite, and the one we have been doing the most lately however is BLTs.

Ah, the classic BLT, just bread, bacon, lettuce, and tomato - with a little bit of mayonnaise smearing on the crusty ends is a summer classic. It's really sort of hard to mess up a BLT unless you burn the daylights out of the bread or bacon, or use spoiled veggies.

Don't bother doing the bacon on the grill

Well, I have heard about making grilled sandwiches before, and I figured this would be a great one to start with since it's so simple to make. I also took it a step further and actually fried the bacon on the grill itself. Let me tell you friends, this step is wholly unnecessary. The product resulting from bacon on the grill in a frying pan is virtually indistinguishable from the product on your stove top. It also takes longer - so skip it all together.

First things first - preheat your grill. Truth be told, I'd limit this exercise to gas grills only, it's a tasty change from the standard sammy, but probably not worth the time and expense of going the charcoal route.

Get the grill marks right - like the one on the right!

That said, get your bacon fried up inside (you can substitute turkey bacon for a healthy alternative - but it doesn't quite have the "shazaaam!" that normal bacon does) and slice some tomatoes and lettuce. I prefer Red Leaf lettuce with thinly sliced tomatoes. Alicia likes her tomatoes sliced thick. Slather on some mayo, grind some peppercorn onto the mayo on the bread, and build the rest of your sandwich.



Now your sandwiches are ready, you are basically using your grill as a big toaster of sorts. Make sure the keep the lid open so you are doing one side at a time. once your bread starts to slightly brown and it's toasty, flip it. The whole process only takes a few minutes and produces a product far superior to your standard toaster or toaster oven. Enjoy!

Texas Style Beef Brisket

This past weekend, my best friend Patrick came up with his wife and daughter from South Carolina. While a North Carolina native, Patrick spent three years living right on the US / Mexican border in Laredo, TX. While there, he ate more Mexican food than he could ever possibly wish, and learned what a Mexican license plate looked like. Beyond the border patrol, the tumbleweeds, and the scathing Texas heat, Patrick did learn a little something about meat. That meat dear readers is Texas Beef Brisket, a hunk of semi-tough cow coming from the front, which, when smoked properly becomes and juicy and tender as any meat around.

Are you getting Hungry Yet?

Just a preface here – there are multiple styles of Texas Brisket. This includes the way it is cooked – over direct heat or in an indirect heat configuration, the seasoning and sauce used, and the type of wood used (most people think mesquite when thinking Texas Brisket). Despite this wide array, we are going to focus in on one particular style – something you may be less familiar with – Oak Smoking!

I was intrigued at the idea when Patrick told me he was bringing me some Oak for smoking the brisket. I’ve done brisket before, and I’ve used mesquite and it turned out quite well. To be honest, I’ve never cooked with Oak, though I have had Oak Brisket at Rudy’s Country Store and BAR-B-Q in Laredo.

The process began Friday night, after procuring the meat. The cut I had was a USDA Choice Angus Beef Brisket right around 5 lbs. I pulled the meat out and set it on the counter. I injected it with probably 6-8 ounces of Swanson beef broth. The broth began to slowly push out through some of the “cracks” in the muscle and it created a nice juicy sheen on the meat.

I spread all the overflowed broth over the brisket and then had Alicia my wonderful fiancé sprinkle my brisket rub on as I patted it into the cut. After a thorough rubbing in, the cut was ready to sit. I placed it back in the box to refrigerate overnight – for about 12 hours. This gives the rub a chance to work its way in a little bit, and the broth to penetrate additional areas inside the brisket.

I started the charcoal chimney a few minutes after 9am on Saturday. I set up the firebox for the minion method, and right at 10am, the coals were on, the smoker had normalized and I was able to throw the brisket on. The temperature never really moved from 225 because of my quick open and close, and the smoking had begun! We actually had some errands to run, so we headed out, returned around 11:30, the smoker was holding strong, so we headed to lunch to meet Patrick and Sarah.

We returned from lunch around 2pm, and the smoker was just starting to drop. It was at this point around 185 degrees – lower than I would normally like it to fall, but not too bad for not having been touched for four hours. I quickly grabbed some hot coals to start a new chimney. At this point, we also had the oak now, so we quickly split a couple of pieces to throw on to get the temp back up. With some careful damper modulation, the temp was quickly back up to 225 and holding until we could get the next chimney in.

Once the next chimney was on, it was basically smooth sailing. We’d pop out and check on the temperatures every hour or so, with basically nothing going on for us to do. What we did do in the meantime however was split the oak into chunks just small enough to fit into my minion box. Not having an axe at my house, Patrick had brought a little hatchet – but oak, dear friends, is a very hard wood, and a small hatchet was proving less useful than you might imagine.

So, the idea that quickly came to mind was to bury the hatchet – no pun there – and then drive it into the logs with my Wilton Sledgehammer. This worked amazingly well, better than an axe in fact because we were able to more accurately slice the size pieces of wood we wanted.

Once the wood was chopped – the process became something like this. Once the smoker would begin to taper off ever so slightly, we would prepare a new chimney, and while waiting for it to be ready, we would put in oak to stoke the temperature, keep it in our ideal range, and smoke the heck out of our brisket! We also would occasionally throw in some oak in between for two purposes; add flavor to our brisket, and watch the smoke roll out of the chimney with great satisfaction like small children. We were careful to not over smoke however.

Smoke Ring - The pink part!

At around 4pm we set the bad boy up with the Texas Crutch. The internal temperature was just a little shy of 180 degrees and truthfully, we were heading to Wedge Brewery for a couple cold ones in the mean time.

After some of the most delicious beer in Asheville, cart style Mexican snacks for all, and peanut shelling galore, we headed back to finish off the smoke. At this point, I wanted to make one final push on the temperature, so I tossed in a couple more oak logs and one final chimney of charcoal.

At right around 7:15, or 9 hours and 15 minutes after the brisket made its way onto the smoker initially, it was pulled off to let rest for about 30 minutes. I put it in the oven, still tightly wrapped in foil. I chose the oven because it was crappy outside, and with the oven off, it’s still a really great insulator.

Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for – the brisket came out of the oven and onto the carving board. Being careful to carve against the grain, I sliced in. The brisket had an INCREDIBLE smoke ring on it. I carved about 2/3 of the meat up, and we ate it on sandwiches, or on the side, with the Western NC style BBQ sauce – spicy or not depending on your taste. It's not Texas, but it's good!

Sliced Brisket Ready for Serving

Patrick actually had his sandwich double stacked with brisket, covered in sauce, with a handy helping of pickle slices on the bottom. This is how he ate them in Texas, so on my second sammy (I know, piggy, wint wint) I ate it that way as well. I will say, it was pretty good like this, though being from NC it just still doesn’t feel 100% kosher to have pickles mixed with any type of smoked meat. Maybe if we keep cooking brisket I’ll adopt it as my own.

Verdict of the day: Texas Crutch plus beef broth injections – my newest adjustments – made a huge difference, and this was the best brisket I’ve done yet, and one of the, if not the best briskets I’ve ever had. The other big difference: oak. The oak is hearty and imparts a distinct smokiness without being too heavy. For the amount we had in the smoker, it certainly was a “lighter” offering of smoke than other woods might have. I’ll definitely use it again, and may try mixing it with other woods.

I also want to give a shout out to meathead. I’ve learned a lot from reading his page on Beef Brisket, so if you’d like to learn more, I’d suggest you go check it out. His page is less narrative and more technical than mine and will give you some great info at Meathead's Texas Brisket Thanks for the read, come back soon!

Western NC BBQ Sauce

So I promised a writeup on rubs and BBQ sauces as my next post. Unfortunately for you, fortunately for my visit count, I’m going to be posting them gradually over time. Truthfully, the primary reason for this is that I don’t know the exact measurements in any of my rubs, as I use an eyeball and taste-o-meter to get it right. That said, I’ll be taking down measurements over the next couple of weeks and doing writeups for various rubs.

That said, not to leave you dangling, I do have one recipe on hand which I’d like to share and I think you’ll enjoy it – all my friends do! It’s pretty easy to make and comes in two varieties – normal and spicy. The recipe will make a little over two full “squeeze” bottles which you can get at Wal-Mart or elsewhere for about $.99 each, and they make great pieces for storage as well as saucing.

The Basic Recipe

Ingredients

½ Cup Apple Cider Vinegar

¼ Cup Water

1 ¼ Cup brown sugar

2/3 Cup Molasses

1 Tablespoon garlic powder

5 Tablespoons worstershire sauce

2 Tablespoons Texas Pete (substitute something else if you’d like, but this is my favorite)

2 “Squeezes” of mustard (whatever the heck that means!)

2 Tablespoons of lemon juice

1 ¾ Cup Ketchup

3 Tablespoons of ground pepper (fresh if possible)

¼ Cup sugar

1/3 Cup Flower (sifted)

Use this recipe in a stove-top sauce pan.

Once all of your ingredients are together, mix the Apple Cider Vinegar and Water and bring it to just before a boil. Right before the boil, mix in the Garlic Power first, then the Brown Sugar, then the Sugar. Mix thoroughly to dissolve as much as possible. Once well mixed, add in the ketchup, worstershire, and then the remaining ingredients except the flower. Mix this all together and let it simmer for 20 minutes. One the consistency is smooth after simmering, sift in the flower. This step should be done slowly, sift a little bit of flower in, and stir it vigorously to mix it in. If you dump too much flower at once, it will clump, and the only reason you are adding flour is consistency.

Once the flower is mixed in, let it simmer for about 10 more minutes. Let it cool down to a temperature that is warm to the touch, and you are ready to transfer it to the bottles with a funnel.

The Spicy Recipe

What I like to do is transfer one bottle’s worth of the recipe above, then make a spicier batch. It is very simple to do, just add in ½ teaspoon of Cayenne and ½ teaspoon of Chili powder. Mix those in well. After that, mix in ½ teaspoon of Dave’s Gourmet Ghost Pepper. Mix vigorously over low heat for about 5 minutes. If you don’t have Dave’s, use a substitute that is also very hot, or something less spicy and adjust the portion to taste!

Pulled Pork Extravaganza

So, you may have read my last post, Don’t Burn the Burgers! which was written after that weekend, but not posted until yesterday. For that I apologize, and I’m telling this to my readers so you won’t be confused when I write this expose on my pulled pork from last weekend.

The winter can be brutally cold here in Asheville, and despite my one frustrating attempt to smoke chicken this winter in seventeen degree weather with a two degree wind chill, I haven’t been using the smoker much in the “off-season.” Since this past weekend was nice and sunny with highs in the mid 50s and low 60s respectively, I had to get out and fire up the smoker.

I decided I would invite over some friends for some cold beers, good times, and delicious pulled pork. I want to preface by saying that pulled pork and I have a love-hate relationship, since it is probably the one thing I find most frustrating, not because of the flavor, but because of the texture.

Boston butt trimmed and ready for rub

Understanding all that, I want to describe the process by which pulled pork should be properly prepared. Again, all of this stuff is something that anyone who is a backyard chef can do, and if you don’t have a smoker, you can emulate with indirect heat in a large kettle charcoal grill.

First, you must trim your meat. Some folks like to skip this step, gesturing that the fat will melt off over time in the smoker, but I like to go ahead and get a clean rub up front. I want to make sure that my rub is on the meat, not on the fat which is melting away. Trim the fat until there is just a thin layer showing on the “fat side” and then you are ready for rub.

Homemade shaker from a Parmesan can

Rubbing the pork is a crucial step. I’ve done this many ways, including coating the butt with olive oil and then rub, a little apple juice then rub, but my favorite is getting the pork good and dry and literally rubbing the spices into it until it has a nice coating. For my rub, I used a custom homemade concoction, which is a little sweet, a little spicy, and has plenty of salt for tenderizing. My next feature article will be on rubs and BBQ sauces made from scratch, so keep your eyes peeled for that one. I will give you a little preview, and it is my homemade rub distributor – a used parmesan cheese can. For something the size of a Boston butt, it spreads great, doesn’t cause a lot of mess, and keeps your hands clean until you begin rubbing.

After your shoulder is rubbed, I like to let it sit in the house for about an hour. Your meat will not go bad, the temperature will be rising from about 34 degrees to a little closer to room temperature. This also gives you the chance to go fire up your charcoal chimney, and get your smoker ready for the meat.

Boston butt seasons and sitting before the smoke

After the smoker is fired up, the temperature should be normalized right at 225 degrees. This is a perfect temperature for slow and low smoking as I have explained previously. With the smoker normalized, place it on the grill grate, above a pan of water (I custom fabricated my smoker to have a shallow one built in which doubles as a heat shield to the firebox.

Close the cover, and keep your eyes on the temperature. Do your best to keep the temperature around 225 degrees throughout the smoke.

After about four hours, I like to take my butt off the smoker and wrap it in aluminum foil. This is colloquially known as the “Texas Crutch.” This will preserve moisture in the meat. Some folks don’t like doing this for a butt because of its sheer size, but for me, it produces the best results. Remember, I don’t have a $1200 smoker.

After that, just keep an eye on your pig, checking it every couple hours or so. The total cook time should take 1.5 hours per pound. For me, this never holds true, and I always end up having to cook it longer for some reason. The internal temperature of pork is not done until it is at least 160 degrees according to the USDA. The ideal temperature for a Boston butt is 190 degrees, because at that temperature it has fully broken down the meat inside. I didn’t quite get mine to 190, closer to about 185, but that was fine because people were getting hungry, and the meat still turned out awesome!

Boston butt ready to be pulled

Once your pork is done, pull it off the smoker and let it sit inside for 30-45 minutes. When mine is “resting” I like to keep it wrapped in aluminum foil to retain heat and moisture. This gives the juices inside a chance to reset, and normalize. It also will allow the pork to cool enough that you can pull it without burning your fingers (been there, done that!)

After your pork has sat for that time period, you can begin pulling it. I simply take two forks, and pull it into large chunks. Once I have those, I pull it into smaller chunks, more manageable for a sandwich. I pull it and toss it into a bowl, and it is ready to eat!

Have your guests serve themselves with tongs and buns on paper plates! I live in Western North Carolina, where the sauce of choice is typically a tomato based, so I had that in two forms – normal and spicy. Additionally, since I am from the Piedmont of North Carolina, my favorite is Eastern NC style which is a vinegar based, so I had that available as well. I’ll be featuring recipes for these sauces along with my rubs in my next piece.

My friends loved it. I had a 6 pound shoulder, and about 10 people over eating and it was all gone – you do the math – with potato and macaroni salad, cole slaw, and macaroni and cheese, each person still manage to eat on average over a half a pound of pork.

Please come back and read up on the sauces and rub feature coming before the end of this week and check back regularly!

Don't Burn the Burgers!

My very dear friend Dustin invited me down to Charlotte to visit him this past weekend. His original hook was that he was moving into a new place on Friday and having a cookout on Sunday. I was basically sold. He then told me he was going to Charlotte 49ers Baseball Saturday and tailgating before. DING DING, We have a winner!

The tailgating grilling was extremely basic, and nothing really worthy of writing about (though in the future, I intend to do a full writeup on grilling at a tailgate) but the real lesson was learned on Sunday.

The situation with Dustin was that he had moved into a house with a guy Jeff who was looking for a roommate. Jeff owns his home and had been there for some time. Jeff seemed to like to cook, but I noticed just a simple Weber kettle grill on the back deck - nothing fancy. I didn't think much of it, since many people cook charcoal on a regular basis, and well, I used to as well for things like burgers and hotdogs.

While Jeff was preparing the burgers, I was ready to be impressed by his skills. He had 73% lean ground beef, had mixed in chopped onion, garlic, jalapeños, some spices, and hand tossed it all to a good consistency. The prospect of eating what would presumably become most tasty burgers, and throwing back a couple cold ones on a warm-ish (55*) winter day had me excited. After the burgers were pattied, and brought outside, the grill was lit. Jeff, like many backyard chefs used Matchlight (not my favorite) and the charcoal was going.

What happened next however was a pretty big shock to me, since I had only met Jeff two days before. He asked me if I would cook the burgers! I personally consider a grill a man's sacred outdoor place, and declined. When he insisted I cook the burgers, I thought it an honor, and decided to give it a go.

Let me interject just a couple of things before I continue the story. Despite what people say - I never make burgers that are under 85% lean, I think too much of the burger melts away. Also, I cook things like burgers on gas grills unless I am at a tailgate, because it's cleaner - cooking on a big charcoal kettle is not something I have done with fatty burgers in QUITE some time.


So I spread the coals around the bottom of the kettle grill and began to put the burgers on. Right about the time I got the last burger on of this first batch, the flaming began. It was to be expected with fatty burgers on a charcoal grill, but I wasn't prepared for the extent to which it was going to attempt to thwart my cooking efforts. Once I realized the situation was only getting worse, not better, I asked Jeff for a spatula. My host only had a short pair of metal tongs outside (not great for flipping burgers) and to my chagrin, when he emerged from the kitchen, he had a short (read: dangerous) metal flipper for this large, flaming kettle grill.

Well, I put on some oven mits, and used this short flipper to get the burgers off the grill. In the meantime, a large flame up singed literally all the hair off a section of my right arm. The time from when we put the burgers on, until the time I got them off - no flipping involved - was probably 3-4 minutes, just long enough to get the spatula and get the patties off while fighting the flames.

The outsides were pretty charred, but not burnt to the point of being ruined. I knew however the other sides had experienced no heat and the burgers weren't cooked in the middle. I had to think fast, as we had no more charcoal, and about 10 more burgers to cook after these were finished.

I decided to do what I know best, and that was setup the kettle grill for indirect heat, and cook the burgers slow and low. I moved all the coals into one "corner" of the kettle, taking up probably 10% of the grill area. I placed the rest of the first round of burgers on the grill and quickly closed the cover.

Probably five minutes later, the burgers were done, slightly charred on one side, but done to perfection on the other - just beyond the point of having any pink in the middle. Without a meat thermometer, it's hard to tell exactly where they sat, but they looked - and tasted good.

While everyone started in on the first round of burgers, I began getting the second round on. Same thing this time - in the indirect heat configuration. These burgers took probably 45 minutes to cook, which is not ideal for burgers, especially if you are making a lot. Also, I will add that cooking burgers with the cover on a grill is so counterintuitive to me it's crazy, but that day I had to do what I had to do to make good burgers.

The surprise of the day - the burgers that had been cooked in the indirect heat the whole time! Their color was phenomenal, there were no burned spots, but the burgers were done to perfection. Their juice had been largely retained where during normal quick grilling it would have been lost. They looked like mini-beef roasts that had been slow cooked!

I'll close with these thoughts, for all you backyard burger enthusiasts.

1) Make your burgers with 85% lean meat - despite what your meat man tells you, anything more fatty just burns away, and flames up your coals.


2) If you are cooking for a [new] friend and they have really fatty meat, think about cooking on indirect coals to begin with. I know this is counterintuitive, but it's better than ruining a good set of burgers because they burn up.


3) EVERY backyard chef, whether you cook once a year, or every weekend needs a decent grilling set. You don't have to spend $100 at Williams Sonoma, but head down to Wal-Mart or Target or Big Lots, and get a) a long handled spatula, b) a long handled fork, c) a long handled set of tongs, and d) a nice grill scrubber / brush. All of that can be had for around $10-20 and is worth every penny.


That's all for now - I'd like to thank Dustin for inviting us down, Jeff for his hospitality, and Charlotte for a great weekend! That includes you too Jeff's Bucket Shop! I'll be back soon with my latest smoke!

Smoke Versus Fire

INTRODUCTION
The age old debate is in grilling is gas versus charcoal. While there are benefits and detriments to each method of cooking a cut of meat, large or small, I want to focus specifically on smoking meat with charcoal versus grilling meat with gas. Some of the comparison will bring to light deficiencies in charcoal and gas generally, but this is a specific comparison of smoking with charcoal and grilling with gas.

The reason for this is that you can modify this comparison any number of ways. You can smoke with gas, or grill with charcoal. Personally, I think if you are grilling items like hamburgers or chicken, charcoal should be reserved for portable situations, like tailgating. Likewise, I am a firm believer that if you are smoking something it should be with charcoal (or wood if you have the equipment) and that gas or electrics cheapen the process.

Below you will find an overview of each, and some detail on their application. I will close with my final thought on the comparison.

CHARCOAL SMOKER
The charcoal smoker is in some ways an evolution of cooking since the beginning of time. Charcoal is just a simple way to have a controlled wood fire, and putting it in a smoker helps you obtain a safe environment, and (semi) stable cooking temperatures. Smoking with charcoal is a great way to enjoy an entire afternoon or day outside with your dinner, watching it progress over time.

The Benefits
As previously alluded to, charcoal smoking is particularly good at cooking large cuts of meat. These include things like pork shoulders, beef briskets, beef and pork loins, whole chickens and turkeys, pork and beef ribs, and really, anything else that is over 5lbs and could benefit from sitting in a smoke filled chamber for 4-12 hours.

The reason that this piece of equipment is so well suited to these types of cuts is because of its ability to cook at a low temperature over time, and the ability to force a smoke flavor onto the food. Sitting somewhere between 200-250 degrees (I prefer 225, but opinions vary) you can hold that temperature and smoke the meet to the point that it is so tender it falls apart at the touch of a fork for some things. For most cuts, you should be able to get a nice crisp outside, a smoke ring (I'll be doing a post on this soon) and a mind-blowing, juicy inside.

The Detriments
The downsides to charcoal smoking are almost as numerous as the upsides, depending on how you look at it. First of all, charcoal is not cheap. You could easily spend $20 on charcoal that you would use in a day with a fully loaded smoker and 12+ hours of smoking. By comparison, you could spend about $20 for a propane tank exchange, and it would last you for dozens of grilling sessions. Also, charcoal is dirty; you have to clean up the ash and you have to wait for it to cool down before you can do that. There may also be problems depending on your setup and duration of a smoke with ash interfering with oxygen flow to your coals. Finally, you have to wait for charcoal to be ready, which depending on your setup could take anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour.

GAS GRILL
The gas grill is also an amazing innovation. The idea that without ever striking a matchbook or flicking a stick lighter, you can have a burning hot grill in 10 minutes is quite appealing. Whether it is a piped in natural gas unit, a sub-$100 unit from the hardware store, or a massive expensive ceramic lined unit, the general mechanics are the same. Gas grills are best suited to quick fires for hot items, and easy cooks during the week.

The Benefits
Gas grills are perfect for smaller cuts of meat, as well as items sensitive to charcoal or wood smoke. Gas grills are great for quick fire items, like beef steak (cook with the cover OPEN please) or more medium fire items like chicken breasts, drums or wings. It's also very good at fish like salmon, also shrimp, vegetables, hamburgers, hotdogs, and yes, even fruit!

Gas grills are substantially cheaper to operate than charcoal, create very little mess which means very little cleanup, and are usually ready in about 10-15 minutes. They are also extremely stable once the temperature is set, and very easy to change the temperature on if you didn't have it quite right to begin with.

The Detriments
The number one detriment to a gas grill, is that it isn't charcoal! What I mean by that is that it doesn't produce the smoke, the flavor, or the general experience that cooking with charcoal does. Most inexpensive home gas grills are also extremely difficult if not impossible to keep at a low enough temperature to cook even medium cuts, like a small roast or a rack of baby backs. There is also always the problem of running out of propane mid-grill if you are not prepared.

CONCLUSION
There you have it - a brief overview of the benefits and detriments of each cooking tool / method. For your big cuts, stick to smoking it low and slow. It produces better flavor, and you can make an entire day out of it with friends if you like. For an evening dinner, or an afternoon of burgers or similar sized fare, go ahead and fire up the gas grill. By the time your charcoal smoker would have been ready to put the meat on, dinner will be done!

Where Smoke Meets Fire: The Origin

How many backyard burger grillers are out there in the world? If you are reading this, you've probably fired a couple hotdogs or chicken breasts on a gas grill from your local hardware chain. What? This isn't you? You must be the hardcore enthusiast, who smokes his meat, low and slow, soaking up the flavor of burning hickory or mesquite.

I have found that these sides tend to be at odds. Charcoal vs. Gas. Hot and quick versus low and slow. These ideologies, the flavoring, the preparation involved with each, and everything in between is what this blog is about. I started out watching my dad cook burgers and steaks on the grill as a youngin', and moved on to trying my own hand as a teen. In college I bought a gas grill. Then a charcoal grill. After law school I was using gas primarily, but a friend opened my eyes to the world of smoking, slow and low - so juicy and tender it falls apart.

I thought I had found the mother load, and to be honest - I still love smoking large cuts. There is this primal instinct in every man (and many of you ladies out there) that makes us want to cook our food with some type of flame - from charcoal, or gas, or what have you - that cannot be matched by a frying pan or a kitchen oven.

Those backyard cookouts, whether they are once a year, or once a week are ingrained in our society. What I want to do here, is share my thoughts on grilling techniques, recipes, and the fruits of my labor on smoking with a cheap offset smoker. 

This is the place for the everyman. Whether you are just starting to smoke and/or grill, or have been at it for years, and still want to get that perfect steak, I want to help. After this introductory blog, I'm going to start by explaining Smoke versus Fire (charcoal smoking versus gas grilling) and what each is best suited for. So, stay tuned for that and much more to come soon!