Sunday #BBQFest

Over the weekend, my ever so thoughtful son decided to remind me of the BBQ foods that we have not had in a while and he decided that Hot Dogs and Hamburgers were at the top of the list.

There is just something about hot charcoal on a cold night

Cottage Fries

Sriracha Aioli

Caramelized Onions

Chicken Shwarma BBQ Style

To say that my kids are picky eaters is an understatement. Shwarma is a staple in my diet and considered one of my four basic food groups with Coffee, Steak, and Pancakes being the other three. Convincing my children that this is a must style dinner meal would be a foodie's greatest challenge. This weekend, I decided it was time to introduce my children to new culinary delights.

Like any other Sunday, the morning began with, "What's for Breakfast?". This was an easy one, since I would be able to utilize leftover Challah from Shabbos. "French Toast" came the reply from the kitchen.

As the day wore on and errands were run in preperation for the start of school this week, the dinner question started to come around. The mysterious answer was "Middle Eastern Chicken". And with that, the adventure began. As today got hectic, I had to settle for fresh bakery pita over making it myself.

Recipe:

Israeli Salad

1 Cuccumber

1 Tomato

2 Sour Pickles

Chicken Shwarma

6 pounds skinless boneless chicken thighs

1 onion sliced thin

Marinade

4 Tablespoon Olive Oil

2 Tablespoon Cumin

2 Tablespoon Tumeric

1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder

1 Tablespoon Onion Powder

1 Teaspoon Salt

1 Teaspoon Black Pepper

Cayenne Pepper (to taste)

8 Pita Bread / Hogie Rolls

Tehina Sauce

Skin and debone the chicken thighs and place in a bowl with olive oil and the marinade. Mix well and let sit at room temperature.

Fill 3/4 of a Charcoal chimney and light it.

While the charcoal is going, dice your vegetables for your Israeli salad.

And start sauteing your onions

Once your charcoal is hot, grill the chicken thighs on both sides until cooked through

When the chicken is cooked, bring inside and dice into small pieces. Add the pieces to the onions in the pan and heat through, stirring to combine the flavors and ingrediants

To assemble: Cut the top off one pita bread, fill the cavity with the chicken and onion mixture, top with tehina and the Israeli Salad and even more tehina as you like.

Here is another way of doing it in a hoagie roll

Once the kids heard this was really shwarma, they voted this one of the top 5 dinners.

First Day of #BBQMonth

May is the official BBQ Month. In our house, every month is BBQ Month, but it's hard not to get into the festivities. To truly embrace the the month of May, I also decided to try my hand at my first BBQ video recipe. For this May 1st BBQ, I did smoked chicken and turkey legs on my Weber One Touch Gold. This meant that we would see crispy skin with smoked chicken on a high heat, versus the low and slow method that yields more smokey flavor, but rubbery skin.

Starting the chimney

Searing the chicken and turkey

Finished Product

#BeginnersGuideToBBQ - Part 1

As Spring has really come upon us in NY, everyone has started to think about BBQ and what they can bring outside. The interesting part is that many people are questioning what and how they have been doing it up until now, and are now asking what they could do to make their BBQs better. With that, I give you a Beginner's Guide to BBQ, or also known as, How To Make Sure Everything Is Better Grilled #EIBG.

1: The Grill

Before we can discuss what you grill and how you grill it, we need to talk about what you grill on. My personal choice and recommendation is a charcoal grill. The charcoal grill you choose should be able to support proper air flow so that you will be able to smoke and do direct grilling.

My recommendation, and the grill I use is the Weber One Touch Gold 22". I have had this grill for 8 years and the only modification I have made is adding a thermometer to monitor internal temperature. Since then Weber has modified their charcoal product line and now offers a temperature gauge on their 22" charcoal grills.

Propane grills also work, but make sure it has multiple burners for direct and indirect cooking and is versatile enough to support rotisseries and side burners. I personally prefer a charcoal grill over propane as it gives you more cooking options when you close the lid and want to keep the smoke/heat internal. Propane grill as made to be very airy to reduce the risk of propane/gas buildup inside the grill when the lid is closed.

2: The Fuel

There are two types of charcoal that can be used: Lump Charcoal and Briquettes Charcoal. There is no right answer here because you can ask different BBQ purists what they use and they will defend either one. Purists will swear by Lump Charcoal because it is after all the natural by product of how charcoal is made. It leaves very little ash, gets hotter than briquettes, and will add flavor to anything you grill. Unfortunately with Lump Charcoal you get inconsistent sizes in the bags you get and therefore inconsistent times on how long your BBQ will last. Briquettes are made for consistent burns and long lasting BBQs. The problem is that what goes into the Briquettes to make them are concerning. Therefore I am very picky about what briquettes I use and when I use lump charcoal. When it comes to briquettes, I only use Kingsford Competition Briquettes or Trader Joes Charcoal (absolutely NO match light charcoal!!)

My general rule:

Lump Charcoal: quick and fast cooking (Burgers, off the bone chicken, steaks, hotdogs)

Briquettes:  

Charcoal Briquettes: longer cooking times (chicken on bone and smoking).

The other reason why I like charcoal is because it is a reusable fuel. When it comes to propane, what you light is what you use. When it comes to charcoal, when you are done with your BBQ, close the vents, and whatever charcoal is left, can be used for your next BBQ by brushing off the ash and pouring lit charcoal on top of it to relight it. Almost every BBQ I do, I always have some charcoal left over from the previous BBQ which reduces how much charcoal I need to reuse.

3: Lighting The Fuel

The only way that I will light charcoal is using a chimney. The reason that I do not use lighter fluid is that it tends to leave a residue that will turn to vapor and go into the food that you are cooking which leaves a dangerous taste that you do not want to ingest. A charcoal chimney is used by placing newspaper on the bottom which lights the charcoal on top. When the bottom layer lights, it then lights the next layer until ultimately all your charcoal is lit and ready to go.

You will know that it is ready to pour when the charcoal turns white

On Part 2, we will discuss direct vs indirect cooking

The high heat smoke

Lets be honest, like everything in life, with the good, comes the bad. When it comes to BBQ and smoking chicken, while you get great flavor and juiciness in the chicken, you also get rubbery skin. Also, you may not have 3 hours before dinner to smoke your chicken. That's when the high heat method comes into play.

First start by cleaning your chicken and adding your favorite dry rub and a little olive oil to help emulsify the spices. In this instance I used dark meat as you can cook it for longer periods and at higher temperatures.I let this marinate while I cleaned the grill and started the chimney.

 For this cook, I used about 3/4 of a chimney of charcoal

Once I seared the chicken on both sides, I moved it onto the indirect side and dropped a piece of hickory to smoke the chicken over the hour it took to cook.

Once finished, there was a light smoke flavor, but crispy skin!!!!!

Try this method out and let me know how you like it.

Brazilian BBQ

If you have ever eaten at a Brazilian BBQ place, you probably remember the that disk with red and green on it that you thought would mostly be on red but fondly remember you couldnt stop leaving it on green. What you probably dont remember is the smokey flavors in every bite of meat they brought you. In Brazil, when they BBQ they throw some wood on the fire and smoke the meat while it grills. Usually I reserve my smoking for my Weber Smokey Mountain and leave the grilling to my Weber One Touch Kettle grill. However, last week I started to experiment with the idea of adding some smoke to my high heat recipes. 

My first experiment was with some chicken thighs that I wanted to do on the grill instead of the smoker since I didnt have 3 hours. When I usually do this, I dry rub the thighs with my rub and some olive oil and then sear the thighs on both side before moving them onto the indirect side and letting them finish. This time I decided to throw some apple wood on the charcoal and let it get some smoke for about an hour before pulling it off.

While it wasn't as 'smokey' as on the smoker, there was an added flavor profile from the apple wood and there was crispy skin. Something that we dont get on 'low and slow'.

Last night I decided to try it again, but this time with a 1.5 inch thick ribeye. I had read in Cooks Illustrated that if you want to get a really good sear on meat, you should take an aluminum pan and invert it over the coals to superheat the grate. While the grill heated I put some kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper and olive oil on both sides.

First 2 minutes with the meat at 45 degree angle.

2 minutes facing the opposite direction

And then the magic moment when you flip it over and get to see that awesome crust you have formed with the sear.

Now that you know the oustide is nicely cooked, we need to bring the internal temperature up. However before I did that, I threw some cherry wood on the charcoal to turn this BBQ into a Brazilian BBQ.

I placed the cover on and then let it smoke until the steak was medium rare.

Aside from the great color on the steak there was an added sweet smokey flavor to the steak

Making things a bit smokey

I have spoken about how when doing "Chirp and Turf" it is important to first smoke the wings and then get the fire hotter for the hamburgers. Its a great way to smoke and grill, but as I have worked with this incredible charcoal Weber One Touch for the last 4 years, I really wanted a dedicated smoker that didn't need as much involvement like the One Touch does when I use that to smoke. I decided it was time to take Everything is Better Grilled to the next level and get a dedicated smoker.

While there are many different smokers available on the market, I am a big fan of Weber's products and quality and went with the 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain.

For this Sundays BBQ with friends, I started the smoker first since this would be cooking the longest.

Like the One Touch, you start with filling and lighting the chimney

Once the chimney is lit, you add the ring that keeps the charcoal in place and pour your charcoal and wait until the smoker comes up to temperature. Add your wood chips and your food and let it go. Since I was doing a variation of chicken and sweet potatoes for my first smoke, I waited an hour before starting the chimney for my grill.

As you can see, this turned my backyard into a real BBQ House!!

The good part about doing these separately was that the grill was able to get super hot for the hamburgers and hot dogs

Around the time that the burgers and spiral hot dogs were done..........

....the smoker was done too. Since the smoker has two levels, I put the sweet potatoes under the chicken so that when the chicken smoked, those juices landed on the potatoes giving them some extra flavor.

Needless to say, there were very little leftovers. Stay tuned for more smoking and grilling recipes over the coming weeks.

Gill Tip of the Week #2

For those new to charcoal, common questions range from how do I get the charcoal going?, to When do I know its ready? If you are using a chimney to light your charcoal, then this grill tip is for you:

Grill Tip of the Week # 1

There is nothing more frustrating then opening your grill and getting ready to put food on and seeing that there is still gook from your last BBQ sitting on the grill. Taking a few steps between BBQs can really make a difference in how your grill looks and how your food tastes.

I find it good policy to at least once a year to completely clean out your grill, this will reduce the amount of smoke that develops when you are grilling as well as keep any foreign flavors from your grill out of your food.

1. Get a good wire brush
2. At the end of your BBQ while the grill is still warm, brush down the grates to remove stuck on food before it has a chance to cool and get really stuck on.
3. If you have a cast iron grate, once its completely clean, take a paper towel and dip it in some oil to coat the grate and keep it in good shape. With cast iron grates, you have to keep a close eye on making sure it doesn't develop rust.