Grill Maestro

Let’s say you’re smoking or grilling in the early afternoon, simply because the mood strikes you, but you find out that your friends will begin descending on your abode for dinner. You know that if you toss the cooked meats in the fridge and then bring them out later, it won’t taste as good. You know that if you keep them on the grill at a low heat or just stick them in the over, they’ll likely try out. So, what are you supposed to do?

Get a brown paper bag, fire up your oven to about 140 degrees, and then put your food inside the brown bag and close the end. Staple it or snap it shut with a metal clip if you’d like, but close the bag off. If you have ribs, put them meat side up. If you have something else, get a plate or platform to raise them off the bag. The bag will act as a moisture sealer and your foods will steam themselves for up to an hour in there. The temperature is just enough to keep the meat warm and the bag will keep it moist!

The fine folks at WaterJel recently sent me a sample of their emergency burn care product, BurnJel Plus with Pain Relieving Lidocaine HCL 2.5%. While I haven’t burned myself recently, it’s always nice to have a product like this around the house because it’s far superior to the standard advice of “run it under cold water.” When you’re grilling, sometimes you forget things are hot when you grab them, leaving you with a delightful surprising.

In, fact, I wish I had this product three weeks ago when I grabbed a hot metal kebab skewer resting beside the grill. I thought there had been enough time to cool down, I was sorely mistaken. While the burn wasn’t bad, having an external analgesic would’ve been better than running the water.

In addition to the active ingredient of Lidocaine HCL 2.5%, Burn Jel Plus also has Vitamin E and Tea Tree oil. Lidocaine is the active ingredient in the product and Lidocaine is a local anesthetic. It’s often used for this purpose, relief of burning pain; but can also be used to relieving itching and other pains. The product is designed for minor burns, if you have anything serious such as blisters or bleeding, go to the emergency room immediately.

In the June/July 2008 issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray, my parents-in-law gave me the issue, there’s a piece by Dorothy Krasowska in which they sampled dozens of hot dogs and chose their favorite. This, hot on the heels of a “hot dog battle” between Oscar Mayer and Ballpark, is certainly something that piques my interest as I am a fan of hot dogs.

So who was rated the best? A brand I’d never heard of, Bar-S Beef Franks. This is what they said of the dogs:

Tasters flipped for this all-beef hot dog. They raved about its “incredible juiciness” and “nice snap.” The judges were also grabbed by its “perfect smoky-and-sweet combination,” along with a “great saltiness.” No wonder Bar-S was the best-selling bargain brand in America last year — as one taster said, “It’s everything a hot dog should be.”

Having never tasted a Bar-S Beef Frank, I must say that beef hot dogs really do make the best hot dogs. There’s a meatiness that cannot be replicated by most pork dogs, which makes it not so surprising that #2 was the Kunzler Beef Frank out of PA’s Amish Country.

Did Oscar Mayer or Ball Park take any honors? Oscar Mayer Turkey Franks won the best turkey dogs and Ball Park took home the best classic hot dog category.

(Photo by ChicagoEye)

I was reading through Bobby Flay’s Grilling For Life book, a gift from my wife, and read this tip about buying electric coffee grinders to grind up your own fresh spices:

You should always have two: one for your coffee and one for your spices. Toasting and grinding your own spices makes such a big difference in taste, and this piece of equipment making he grinding part simple to do.

As a grilling amateur, I had never though to toast and grind my own spices! In addition to spices, FLay recommends adding other things that add to the fragrance such as toasted nuts, seeds, and other bit of flavory goodness. The $20 Braun coffee grinder we currently have has worked well for coffee so we’ll have to pick one up for spices. Bed Bath & Beyond has them for around $20 and you can use one of their ubiquitous 20% off coupons for a greater discount.

I might have to grind up some of our fresh spices we have growing on your little patio garden!

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…