Master chef Sharone Hakman, an East Los Angeles native with Israeli ancestry who’s gone on to cook for the Hollywood elite, is no stranger to having to please everybody at once. Hakman’s BBQ sauce, which runs $11.00 for 12 ounces online with shipping included, is meant to please the palate of the people, while designed with the care of a culinary guru. Hak’s Chipotle Bourbon BBQ Sauce is not just a bottle with his name on it – Hakman made it his mission to personally create a crowd pleasing sauce that wasn’t going to fall flat on flavor or cost a fortune. He ended up creating a flavor that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay called “The most delicious BBQ sauce ever made.”

The sauce has an initial sweet and tangy taste telling of the caramelized onions and fresh garlic that make up phase one of the flavor. It’s quickly followed up by a little blast of bourbon (this really makes the sauce shine and separates it from the pack), heated and seasoned to perfection by the delayed release of flavor from the smoked and roasted chillies. It’s what you’d certainly expect and hope for from a chef who specializes in taking the complex sensations of south of the boarder and combining them with the fusion cuisine of Israeli cooking. While your usual BBQ sauce makers who take pride in their work tend to produce flavors that seem tempered with time and tradition, Hakman’s comes off as fresh, bold, and a little revolutionary.

Three bottles bought online will run you about $30.00 with shipping included. Here’s to Hak’s BBQ Sauce making its way to your local shelves at some point, or else the cost will remain too high for most consumers. But that’s a given when a sauce is just starting out. Judging from the flavors it possesses and the versatility it has between steaks, ribs, and even pulled pork, it’s probably a safe bet it’ll catch on. In the meantime it’s certainly worth the price for both the experiment and the sensations. You won’t be disappointed in anything but the bottle running out too soon.

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I learned about them because of a mailer I received that offered a $10 tank, which is more than 50% off their regular price, and that coupon code is PROPANE740 (Expires 7/31/2010). They have a ton of coupons for new customers, all for a $10 tank, including PROPANE6158 (Exp. 8/31/10) and PROPANE9300 (Exp. 9/30/10), so do a quick search online to find an active coupon.

As for delivery, I just left the tank out on my front steps before 7AM and it was replaced sometime during the day. For $10, it’s a steal and worth doing at least once. I’m not sure if it’s worth $22, as the local Home Depot is only a few minutes away, but for $10 it’s a no brainer.

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If you’re a parent who wants something quick and easy to make, without any fuss and very little preparation, the Barber Foods Chicken Grillables line is perfect for you. They have a variety of preparations and the end result is very tasty. For experienced grillers who want complete control, these types of products aren’t for you (I don’t just mean Barber Foods grillables, I mean any prepared food products).

For example, at a backyard barbecue the other day, we had burgers that were simply ground beef molded into patties. They didn’t add any spices or any other add-ins (like Worchester or egg or onion or green peppers, etc), they bought preformed patties and put them on the grill. If you are that type of griller, which is perfectly fine, then you’ll be a fan of the grillables they’re formed into nice “burger” sized pieces that work well on the grill.

I think the perfect use of these types of foods are when dealing with kids. The chicken is tasty, preparation in minimal, and you can focus on other things. We don’t have kids yet but I can see how these would be perfect.

Another nice aspect of the grillables is that each one is 140 calories and 5 grams of fat, which is possible because of standardization, and great if you are looking to watch your weight.

Next time you’re at the grocery planning your next cookout, give them a look.

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If you’re looking for some cool recipes, you’re in the right place though. It categorizes the recipes into:

• Show-stopping Asian Ribs
• American Ribs
• Mexican and Southwestern
• Mediterranean & Caribbean
• Fruit-based Barbecue Glazes
• Succulent Braised Ribs

There are a lot of delicious recipes in there, check it out.

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For Memorial Day weekend, I put together the Brinkmann SmokeN Grill Charcoal Smoker and Grill courtesy of Home Depot (get it there, if you want it, instead of Amazon.com, it’s only around $35 now; I provided the link for additional details) in order to provide this review of its features.

Overall, it’s a very affordable smoker and at $35, downright cheap. When put up against a Weber 2820 Smokey Mountain Cooker/Smoker, it’s really no comparison. But you have to remember that the Weber reatils for $200 whereas the Brinkmann is a mere $35. Given the huge price disparity, I think that the Brinkmann really afforded itself quite well.

Installation: Installation was easy and took maybe 30 minutes. You are basically putting together the handles, attaching the legs, attaching the metal hooks for the grates, water tray, and charcoal tray, and putting on the thermometer. You could do it in your sleep, which was nice because I was tired.

Good:

• Thermometer: It’s nice that there’s a thermometer on the outside but it really had three levels – Warm, Ideal, and Hot. It didn’t indicate the actual temperature, which would’ve been nice, but it was convenient that you could read the sensor without opening anything and releasing heat or smoke.
• Cooking Surface: For $200 on the Weber you get two 18-1/2-inch-diameter cooking grates, for $35 on the Brinkmann you get two 15-1/2 inch-diameter cooking grates.
• Portable: You could, without taking it apart, move the smoker around by using the handles – a definitely plus.

Bad:

• Door Handle: The door handle to access the coals and wood is metal and it gets hot. They should have used treated plastic or something so that you could access it without burning your fingers.
• No Air Vents: It’s difficult to regular temperature if you can’t regular air flow! The charcoal tray is essentially an open bowl at the bottom of the smoker, so you get a ton of air flow and no way to control it. There isn’t even an air vent at the top.
• Water Bowl is Too Low: It made it difficult to add additional coals or wood chunks and put them where I wanted to. It’s a minor complaint as I could just use tongs, but it wasn’t an issue with the Weber.
• No Handles On Top Grate: If you have both grates cooking and you want to access the lower grate, it’s a pain to lift the top grate because it lacks handles. I often, about two hours in, like to wrap my meats in foil with some apple juice to add some juiciness back in, but this was made much more difficult by the lack of handles.

Overall, the Brinkmann wasn’t bad at all. If you’re just starting out and would like to cut your teeth on a simple smoker, you wouldn’t be doing yourself a disservice by using it. I think I’ve been spoiled by the feature-rich Weber Smokey Mountain so I may not have reacted the same way had this been my first.

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So I had mentioned that I was concerned about piercing steaks with anything as they’re cooking because it releases the juices and dries out the steak. So, to minimize the potential of this I did two things with the two steaks we grilled. On one steak, I pierced a section of fat to see if the grill charms would hold there as it cooked. I figured that I wouldn’t be eating the fat section anyway (using the fat to flavor the meat around it) and it would be a good test of the grill charm’s ability to hold on. On another piece, I pierced meat but picked a section that had more marbling and was near the edge. There, I figured if I lost juice, it was a “juicier” piece anyway so it would be okay.

The end result was that both steaks turned out beautifully. The grill charms didn’t have an appreciable effect on the cooking process. So if you had reservations about these things because of how it would affect the food, don’t. Just ignore the pictures on the grill Charms site (they pierce in the middle) and use them as I have and you won’t have any problems.

I think that Grill Charms are a fun and entertaining idea though you probably won’t be using it on a daily basis unless you have a large family; however, if you have a grill maestro in the family who has everything, grill charms might be a fun little bonus for them to have.

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Here are some very useful features you won’t find in your regular crap metal tongs:

• A one-hand locking mechanism that keeps the tons closed.
• The tongs have teeth!
• One side is made of stainless steel and the other is a high temperature plastic. The stainless steel side is for the grill and the high temperature plastic side is for any non-stick surfaces, like pans sitting on a side burner.

My first concern was the “high temperature plastic” part because when I use tongs, I generally don’t pay attention to which side touches the grill so I was a little worried I’d touch the plastic side and melt it on the grill. Well, turns out I did touch it a couple times but it didn’t melt, even when the grill was running close to 400 degrees. I actually was using it as normal and mistakenly thought some stuck food (burger meat) was burned plastic but it cleaned right off (whew!). So, I can give an endorsement that the plastic won’t melt if it comes into contact with the grates.

As for my other thoughts, I think the tongs flex a bit too much so you have to give it a really good grip if you want to flip something that’s somewhere around 5 lb. If I were designing it then I’d put a little more reinforcement on the thing so that I wouldn’t have to grip it so far down towards the teeth.

Otherwise though it’s a pretty solid set of tongs.

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This past weekend I took the time to put the Char-Broil TEC grill together and it took slightly longer than then estimated 30-45 minutes the instruction manual said to put aside, it took maybe an hour, mostly because I couldn’t get one pesky screw to catch. Regardless, it was certainly significantly less painful than putting together the other Char-Broil grill that I bought a year ago, which easily took close to nearly two hours since it was completely disassembled.

So, onto my first impressions. The grill comes mostly assembled, save the two side shelves, which means that the majority of the propane piping is all connected and I wouldn’t have to do any of it. While it wasn’t a big deal for my other grill, there’s always the thought that someone could mis-connected something and have a propane leak and just not know about it. Another great assembly feature was that they clearly marked off each screw and washer you needed in a separate chamber of the packaging instead of opting to throw everything into a small bag and then give you a list of parts.

One nice feature that the grill had, which should be standard on all grills, was that the propane tank sat in a seat that could be extended out of the front of the grill. This means that you don’t have to go reaching into the bottom of the grill to twist the propane value; you just slide it out and can easily turn the valve. It also makes putting the propane tank on a cinch.

Once assembled, the grill looks pretty impressive. Now, I’ve never had a “nice” grill and this one retails around $700 so I was pretty impressed with its construction. It sports a 660 sq. in. cooking area, a third of which is sectioned off for the TEC infrared burner and two thirds for conventional propane cooking, and puts out a pretty healthy 45,000 BTUs that you can certainly feel if you have the thing going full blast. The sideburner looks nice too, putting out 13,000 BTUs itself, and when it burns you can hardly see the flame.

In the coming days I’ll post some more pictures of it, including it in action, a grease flareup, and a pair of steaks getting their grill on.

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WNBC recently wrote about a Consumer Reports “grill” test of two cuts of meat from four online vendors and found that Allen Brothers’ steak took top honors in the strip steak category and Lobel’s took the ribbon in the filet mignon group. The four online vendors were Allen Brothers, Omaha Steaks, Lobel’s and Costco. It’s worth mentioning that the steak from Costco was only available online, not in store.

The testers bought filets mignons and strip steaks, looking for different things in each cut and grading each differently. All the steaks were grilled on iron skillets to medium-rare and then tasted by “expert tasters.” (That’s not a bad job!) In the filets, they looked for beefy flavor and a melt-in-your-mouth texture; in the strip steaks, they looked for tenderness and a “distinct beef flavor.”

Best strip steak was a 10-oz $25 beefy selection from Allen Brothers with Costco taking second with a 24-oz cut that cost only $23. Both only scored Very Good ratings, not Excellent, because they found that they were too chewy to get the top score. As for filet mignon, Lobel’s earned the only Excellent score with their 8-oz. steak that cost a very meaty $30 each.

via WNBC.

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