BBQ Everyday

I have learned how to BBQ. In the very beginning, I didn't even know how to work with charcoal, let alone wood. My transformation has brought BBQ into my life in ways I never expected. However, still today BBQ is more of a weekly big cook than a way of life. That is the next step I am taking on my journey.

As much as I love BBQ, in many ways, it is a labor of love. It certainly is not particularly easy or convenient. At the same time, the meals you get are well worth the effort you put in. The problem for me is simply life. I like to think of the life after winning the lottery when my biggest concern in life is what cook I am going to spend all day on. In my real world though, BBQ time competes with so many other things.

A large number of cooks simply take time. Time for a cook doesn't really fit into the schedule of someone who works and also has a massive schedule of kid's activities I need to carpool for. It is really next to impossible to come home from work and start a real cook for that night's dinner. So how do I shift this?

First off, I am not about to give up charcoal. It may take more time to get the grill ready, but cooking on gas to me is more just cooking outside, not BBQ. So I started dividing up cooks by how long they need to be on the grill. Things like burgers are quick. So for starters, I can get home and immediately start the charcoal. While that is starting to burn, I can prep. Then, an hour after I get home, we are eating a real meal.

Short cooks like this get a bit boring though. So this week, I did a little experiment. Rather than a big Sunday dinner cook, I cooked a ton of meat to eat throughout the week. 

I got a pork shoulder and ten chicken breasts. I started this whole cook the way I would a normal slow cook for Sunday dinner. I prepped the shoulder and got the cooker going. Then I started to prep the chicken breasts. About an hour into the cook, I added some chicken breasts on. Cooking them at 250 until they were about 10 degrees from being done. At that point, I reverse seared them. 

Once off the grill, I simply let the chicken slowly come down to room temp. When the shoulder was finally done, I brought that in and pulled it. This ended up leaving me on Sunday night with a large container of cooked chicken, and another large container of pulled pork.

Now, my week's dinners had a couple short cooks, plus pulled pork and chicken to last throughout the week. It takes a little creativity to pull this off. My family doesn't want to eat pulled pork every night. But, pulled pork sandwiches with slaw one night followed up with making mac and cheese with pulled pork a couple nights later works.

I realize that this comes very dangerously close to left-overs, but so be it. All I know is I spent an entire week eating BBQ and never had to have a 10 pm dinner because a cook took so long. All in all, I was really impressed with how well this worked. Which leaves me planning all sorts of weekend cooks I can do this with. BBQ a chicken, which gives you chicken obviously...but pull some of that for tacos. There are so many possibilities I am anxious to explore!

Until next post, remember kids.....CHUNKS not chips!

Creative Left-Overs

As a whole, I am not a fan of left-overs. I enjoy cooking, I enjoy eating it right then. After that though, well it just doesn't really seem like something I want to eat. Fortunately, though I am married to a devote lover of left-overs, so it really has never been a problem. 

But now, if you go back a couple of cooks ago, I bought a full beef tenderloin. I then attempted to slice some nice filet mignon's out of it. At that point, I really had no clue what I was going to do with the rest of the tenderloin, so I bagged it and threw it in the freezer until I could figure out a plan.

A few weeks later I got a text from a friend wanting to BBQ and drink some beer. Now historically, this meant me going over to his place and drinking while he cooks. Apparently, my reputation behind the grill has taken over. I didn't realize it, but he was inviting himself over to my house to drink while I manned the grill.

It was a little last minute in that I had no cook prepped. The last thing I wanted to do was pick up some pre-made burgers and dogs. Then it hit me! I had a couple pounds of left-over tenderloin, I have a meat grinder, I have bacon. So I picked up some additional chuck and fired up my meat grinder. An hour later, I had 16 beautiful hamburger patties. 

I kept 8 out to cook that night and froze the other 8 for a future meal. I cracked open a Coor's Banquet, seasoned the patties with Southern Links hamburger rub and fired up the kettle. I gave the patties a quick seer, and then slow cooked them until they were medium rare. 

The combination of grinding bacon in with the beef is amazing every time I bite into it. There is just something about it which takes a typical burger completely over the top. I have always loved a good burger, but these are even a step beyond that. I guess after eating them, it really isn't much of a surprise that people are inviting themselves over to my place for BBQ.

Now, all in all, this is not a completely new cook for me. Hell, I wrote about it before. Yet today it is worth writing about because it marks a new realm of cooking for me. I am not cooking purely what Mikey assigns me. I am looking in my freezer and coming up with a cook based on what I see. Now, I hesitate to think of myself as a pitmaster, but I am pretty damn impressed with myself to make it this far!

Until next post, remember kids.....CHUNKS not chips!

Slicing Off a Steak

A while back, Mikey was asking me what other cooks I wanted to do. It was a difficult question for me. I had never been a super huge meat eater so, to be honest, I have already learned to cook more than I had ever hoped to. Then while we were throwing different cook ideas back and forth I made the startling realization that I have not yet really learned to cook a steak.

Now steak is not our typical low-heat cook that lasts for hours, so I can see how we missed it. Yet, when you think of a grill, a steak comes immediately to mind. The next logical question was what cut of steak. Again here, I knew too little to even venture a guess. While we tried to figure that out, the local butcher made the decision for me.

While walking through the store I came across a 4-day sale on Beef Tenderloin. All I knew at the moment was that it seemed like a really good deal. I assumed I could make a great cook out of it, but I had no clue what that would be. Then Mikey helped connect the dots and informed me that this would be the steak cook. As I learned, with a little knife work, this massive cut of meat would be transformed into Filet Mignon.

This cook meant I was changing everything. No low and slow cooking at 250 this time around. Plus this cook required far more knife skill then I was used to, so it felt like a challenge.

With a sharpened knife in hand, I went to work. Now, when you look at a big cut of meat and think all you need to do is slice off the layer of fat it looks easy. A half-hour later I realized that if you are not good with a knife, it is certainly not that easy. I hacked my way through, and while it may not have been pretty, I got through it.

So I had my filets trimmed and ready. When I looked at them, they looked amazing, yet something was off. I had no idea what, but something felt different than the filets I see at the store. Either way, it was what I had to cook so I went to work. 

I rubbed them down with some Beefcake Beef Rub and let them sit until they got to room temperature. Since they were thick, Mikey advised me against cooking them only on high heat. For this, I would put them on indirect heat, let them come up about halfway to temp, then reverse sear them on the blazing fires of hell until they are ready. 

So while they got to room temp, I decided for good measure I would cook some Au Gratin Potatoes and also try a red wine reduction sauce to have with the filet. With those sides of the cook coming along perfectly it was time to start the grill. It's funny that I was so accustomed to setting up the Weber for 250 that high heat was actually a bit of a challenge for me to get. Once I was there I started cooking. 

It only took a few minutes for the steaks to get ready for the reverse seer. Once we were searing it only took a few minutes more before they were done. I let them rest and then cut in to see how they looked. I was going for Medium Rare, and while I was probably more on the Medium side, they looked awesome.

As far as eating them goes, it was a pretty damn spectacular meal. Now that being said, there was one thing I didn't expect. While eating I noticed a portion of the filet had a lot of fat that did not render. Again, not something I expected from a filet. And this is when I finally connected the dots. Apparently, there was a bit more of the filet I should have trimmed off, which explains why they didn't quite resemble the fillets I was used to. 

At the end of the day, it didn't make a difference. It was a great meal and a great experience. I hardly would say I am a master at grilling a steak, but at least now I know where to start.

Until next post, remember kids.....CHUNKS not chips!

Chicken's Last Stand

Hey everyone! So if you have been a reader of the blog, you will know chicken is my Achilles Heel. For some reason, anytime I venture into cooking a chicken it just goes wildly wrong. With that, I wasn't exactly thrilled when I almost literally had a chicken appear on my doorstep.

It had been a hell of a couple weeks. On top of the usual life, my household of 5 became the house holding 5 separate cases of strep throat. Now, I love BBQ, but in the middle of this sickness BBQ was the last thing on my mind. I was the first to catch it, which also meant I was the first to feel somewhat normal again. Feeling almost back to myself, my phone rang. It was my mom saying "Hey, I have this chicken defrosted and ready to cook, but I am not able to cook it this weekend. You want it?"

Truthfully, I kinda didn't want it. I mean I suck at chicken and could think of 100 things I would rather BBQ. But, I am cheap and don't want to turn down a good bird. Besides, even if I screwed up the chicken, I still had a chicken carcass to make stock with and the rest of my mending house would like some soup. There, I had talked myself into the bird.

I wish I could tell you some elaborate story of how I mentally prepped for the grill of a lifetime where I finally master the chicken. But the truth is, there wasn't. I simply said, hey I am gonna do my thing. I am going to hold heat, I won't rush it and we shall see what happens...and oh yeah, I am gonna make a side that could double as a meal in case the bird doesn't fly!

That simple thought process is exactly how I cooked. I rubbed the bird with some BBQ Bob's Alpha Rub, got a perfect fire going, added smoke and away we went. Fortunately for me, it was a giant chicken, which meant I had plenty of time to work on my alternative meal of failure...I mean side dish. Again sick house so...I went with a broccoli cheese soup. The soup is pretty amazing, some potatoes, broccoli, and onions cooked in a stock with some blue cheese. Once it is all cooked, you blend it and throw in some cream. Honestly, it is about as good as a vegetarian soup can be.

So I got that cooking, the bird cooking and honestly, it was time to relax a bit. Next thing I knew, the soup was ready to blend and the bird was about at temp. Now I haven't ever done this right. So I didn't really know what to expect. The darkened skin of the chicken really just made me assume I messed up again. Still, I took her temp and it seemed to be exactly where it should be. So I brought it in and let it rest. 

Now while I cannot say what a good BBQ chicken looks like, all of my previous failures have gotten me pretty versed in breaking down a chicken. So I grabbed my knife and went to work. This was the stunning part. First the legs and thighs. After I cut them off, they looked pretty damn good. The wings were next and they too looked amazing. As I started to cut out the breast meat I was sure that I would see a pink center. But I didn't! The meat was all cooked, not overcooked. Not dry, the meat was actually glistening!

So while I will gladly put my broccoli cheese soup up against anything, today the chicken stole the show. I mean seriously, I still don't love chicken. I will choose beef or pork just about any day over chicken. But, this chicken was damn good.

Now on to the final part of this story, because it doesn't end here. Now, I took that smokey carcass, the scraps of skin, and the leftover bones and tossed them in a pot. I added some chopped onions, carrots and garlic. I filled it up with water and just let it simmer for a couple hours. In the end, I strained out everything leaving me with the most amazing chicken stock I have ever tasted. I mean hell, you can actually taste the smoke in the stock. 

So now, I have left over the smoked chicken breast and my chicken stock. Throw in some veggies and noodles and that will be a leftover meal which might actually taste better than the first meal it came from. 

Until next post, remember kids.....CHUNKS not chips!

A Quick Turnaround

Somewhere along the way, it was realized that I had not yet grilled shrimp. Well to be fair, I had, but that was way back in the days of my clueless ventures in using a propane grill which, even for shrimp, doesn't count. Upon this realization, it is safe to assume that grilled shrimp was indeed my next assignment. 

This cook is very different to what I am used to because it is a speed cook. There is no slowly reaching temp and making the choice of medium rare or let it come up a couple more degrees. This is high heat, put em on the grill and before you can sit down for a beer they are done. So combine that with my new mission of creating entire meals and this is one of the rare cooks where I am starting the rest of my meal prior to anything hitting the grill. 

The set-up for the shrimp was pretty simple, put them on skewers, rub them with Lane's Q-Nami and you are set. For the sides, I was going with a garlic parmesan orzo and some lemon crusted asparagus. Here is the big issue with the cook as a whole. The orzo, once cooked, take about 10 minutes. The asparagus takes about 10 minutes. And the shrimp, yeah, they take about 10 minutes too. Additionally, when I am cooking meat, the meat can rest and hold temp for a long time giving me the luxury to finish up everything else. Shrimp, on the other hand, do not hold heat at all. 

To accomplish all this, it took on the mantra of prep absolutely everything I could before anything started. That way, when I was cooking I didn't have to worry about anything other than just cooking. I even went to the point of using little bowls for everything. My shallot, garlic and lemon zest in one for the asparagus. Garlic and parmesan in another for the orzo. Melted butter and some addition Q-Nami for the shrimp. And finally, one with chopped parsley to finish both the orzo and the shrimp. 

With all the prep I could do done, I started cooking the orzo and lit the kettle. With the kettle we were shooting for 350-400 degrees, so that was pretty simple. I let the kettle hold heat while I heated my cast iron and finished cooking the orzo. I started to saute the shallot and garlic, drained the orzo and now it was game time.

I put the shrimp skewers on the grill, added my asparagus to the cast iron and simultaneously tossed the orzo in a skillet. The next 10 minutes was a blur of checking this, stirring that, running to check on the shrimp etc. To say that this cook was a high energy race to the finish is an understatement. Yet, it all came together.

The meal was outstanding. Every flavor kinda played off each other and it truly did feel like a meal. The shrimp stood out. The flavor of Q-Nami never disappoints. If I could go back and change part of this meal, I wouldn't. It all worked perfectly together and it was simply great. 

Shrimp is an absolutely great cook for the grill. It is simple and it is quick. Where shrimps difficulty comes in for me is the fact that it does not retain heat once it is cooked. You better have everything else ready because when the shrimp are ready, it is time to eat. 

Until next post, remember kids.....CHUNKS not chips!