Grill Maestro

When I was in college, I watched our fraternity cook boil ribs prior to putting them into the oven and then basting them with BBQ sauce. I thought the ribs were delicious and I thought that boiling ribs was the way you were supposed to prepare them so they fell off the bone like his did. While I never prepared ribs that way, mostly because I didn’t have pots large enough to boil the ribs in, I always thought boiling was the way you got the meat nice and tender.

Wrong!

Boiling ribs, while they do get the meat tender, washes away any flavor you could get into the meat and a big big no-no if you want some good tasting ribs. If you ever boil the ribs, they’ll never soak up the marinades and you’ll never get sauces to stick to it. It’s the difference between eating a stick of pure chocolate and a pretzel stick covered in chocolate, that flavor won’t permeate.

Instead, cook the ribs over low heat and let the juice and sauce permeate and tenderize the meat.

This weekend four friends, my wife and I drove down to Washington D.C. (it’s only 20 minutes away, it’s not an epic journey) to see the 16th Annual Safeway National Capital BBQ Battle for the first time. One of my friends’ boss had competed in these contests on numerous occasions and always wanted to go, so it was nice to be able to finally find the time to check it out. I can wholeheartedly say that everyone had a great time.

The event takes place on Pennsylvania Ave between what I believe is 9th and 13th, if not farther, and the entire place is just bumpin’ with activities, vendors, and fun. I took a bunch of pictures which I’ll upload in a bit but overall the experience was a great time.

As soon as we walked in we got in line for the Safeway Sampling tent. The tent is huge with easily twenty various vendors giving out samples of steak, chicken, hot dogs, juices, drinks, cookies, chips, salsas, sauces, etc. The line was huge and we easily waited an hour and the samples were OK, they were of commercially available products. It would’ve been awesome to get BBQ samples.

At the end of the tent is where the demonstrations take place. After getting through the samples, we watched Virginia Willis, author of Bon Appetit, Y’All: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking, give a cooking demonstration. She prepared a great steak salad, a onion confit, and a nice brownie (we picked up the recipe cards). It was delicious and definitely a nice treat.

After leaving the tent, we started walking the grounds. There were a ton of vendors, many of which seemed a little out of place for BBQ battle. Wii Fit was there (the girls loved playing it) as well as Honda, Geico, and several other large corporations. As we walked further down we started seeing some major barbecue product vendors include Char-Broil. We saw that they were talking about the The Big Easy oil-less fryer. We walked up to the presenter during some down time, he was this huge guy who said he played in the NBA DL (which was totally plausible), and we talked up the Big Easy to some people watching. Afterwards, he hooked us up with some t-shirts and coozies to help keep our drinks cold.

As we kept walking (the event was huge, totally worth the $10 ticket price), we finally started seeing the trucks and rigs of all the competition teams. It was unreal the size of these things, you knew these folks were serious about barbecue! At a couple trucks, despite their signs of “no samples,” they were giving away some samples of their goods and it was delicious.

Overall, the event was a lot of fun. There was so much activity and so much excitement that we were truly blown away. What helped was that the temperatures weren’t too hot and that there were plenty of sports drink samples from Gatorade and Snapple to keep you hydrated if you didn’t feel like water or beer.

I’ll post pictures and more discussion later on this week but I definitely see myself going back next year.

Whenever cooking burgers, I usually cook to both time and touch. That means I cook until the burgers to what I consider an adequate amount of time and to a firmness is what I associate with a particular level of doneness. This, however, can be dangerous according to some studies. In fact, courtesy of Megan Severs, a Senior Account Executive at GolinHarris; 90% of grillers don’t know that 160° F is the proper temperature according to The Beef Checkoff. Only 15% use a thermometer.

I’ve never used a thermometer but have never had indigestion problems, so I could myself (and my guests) lucky, but here are three tips for proper burger cooking:

• Always cook ground beef to 160 F. This ensures ground beef isn’t under- or over-cooked, and any harmful bacteria is destroyed.
• Stop eyeballing the doneness of your burgers. Rather than relying on colors or juices, get an instant-read meat thermometer, which gives an accurate temperature reading much quicker than an
  oven-proof meat thermometer.
• Use your instant-read meat thermometer properly. Always insert the meat thermometer sideways into the thickest portion of the patty to ensure it has reached 160 F. And to make sure you get an accurate reading, hand wash the thermometer instead of using the dishwasher.

In the mood to grill some fish but don’t have a basket or cedar planks to grill on? Try making a temporary grilling platform using a piece of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil. That’s right, stiff cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil is a great way to create a small platform for you to grill fish on when you don’t have an alternative.

Concerned that the cardboard will catch on fire? Don’t be, paper doesn’t burn via heat unless it reaches over 451 degrees F (hence the famous Ray Bradbury novel, Fahrenheit 451. As long as you don’t get that hot, the cardboard should be safe. The foil is there to ensure the fish doesn’t stick to the paper and so it deflects flames.

One additional benefit of using this is that it’s often convenient when you have smaller pieces of fish and don’t want to waste a larger cedar plank.

If you are going to be grilling fish on cedar planks, I recommend spending the extra money and getting fresh fish over frozen fish. The main difference between frozen and fresh fish is that fresh fish is often jucier and more flavorful than frozen fish. Frozen fish sometimes gets a little dry, a little tigher, and that makes it harder for the cedar flavor to get into the fish.

I’ve grilled salmon on both and found that the juiciness of fresh fish really makes a big difference. Frozen fish isn’t bad, but fresh is better and when you figure you only have the cedar planks for a few uses, you might as well use the good stuff.

The 16th Annual 2008 Safeway National Barbecue Battle is a little over a month away, taking place in our national’s capital the weekend of June 21st and 22nd. This year, the National Pork Championship will be held there so look for it to be a rowdy and exciting weekend. Last year I wanted to go but was unable due to prior commitments so this year I’ll just have to go both days! (okay maybe not) Either way, I’ll be there to check out the furious competition.

I can’t wait for the Safeway sampling pavilion! Open six hours from noon to 6pm, you can get free food samples until they run out. Mmmmm…

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.

If you’re as big a fan of chicken wings as I am, you should try grilling them rather than frying or broiling them in the oven. All you need to do is whip up a nice bbq chicken marinade, fire up the grill, and grill them as you would any other chicken piece. If you don’t have a marinade, here’s my favorite bbq chicken marinade in the world.

A few words of advice:

• Don’t put the heat too high - Wings are super delicate but if the heat it too high then you’ll burn the wings before you cook them, I prefer a medium heat that has just a little of sizzle.
• Use the warming racks - You will probably have a lot of wings and will need to contend with the variable heat zones of your grill so be sure to use your warming racks to let some wings take a break while others are cooking.
• Remember to keep glazing - Set aside some marinade as a glaze (don’t use the stuff you marinaded with, that’s unsafe) and glaze liberally.
• Cook thoroughly - It’s chicken so make sure you cook thoroughly, the last thing you want to do is get someone sick.

Enjoy!

Consumer Reports offers up, as their tip of the day for May 17th, some very useful gas grill shopping advice for those of you looking to get your own propane grill (or replace and old clunker ready for the scrap heap). Some solid advice includes bringing a magnet to figure out if you have a solid 300-series or 400-series stainless steel grill… a magnet will stick to cheaper grades. Another good tip is to recognize that grill companies generally report cooking area to include warming racks so be aware that you’re not talking total grill surface area.

Another gem of a tip from the comments, provided by Steven, is to consider customer service. He hasn’t had a good experience with Brinkmann… and I just got one of their smokers from Home Depot.

Until recently I didn’t know the difference between a rib eye and a porterhouse, a sirloin from a round, and a chuck from a flank… but this image from the Encyclopaedia Britannica does a great job of illustrating the various cuts of beef and where they are located on the cow.

Generally, the more muscular the cut, the tougher it is. As expected, chuck (pot roast, top blade, ground beef), breast/foreshank (corned beef and brisket come from here), and round are tougher because they are located near the legs of the cow. The legs are clearly more muscular than the middle, where you’d find rib (rib eye roasts, back ribs), short loin (t-bone, porterhouse), and sirloin.