Friends Grill

I am behind on my grilling updates! This grilling experience was at a friends house for the Super Bowl. The burgers were tasty and topped with grilled bacon. We had a great time watching the game and eating.

It is always fun to have dinner at someone elses house and to see how they grill. I want to improve and one of the great ways to do that is to watch others.

You may also notice the Cavenders Greek Seasoning which is all that he uses.

Birthday Ribs

I recently celebrated a birthday and decided to have a nice rib dinner. I marinated the ribs for about four hours in a mix of juice and barbecue sauce. To begin the grilling process I seared the ribs on the gas portion of the grill for about 4 minutes per side. Then I wrapped the ribs in foil with a healthy portion of the marinade and cooked on indirect heat on the charcoal side for about three hours. Due to the number or racks I was cooking it was challenging to continually rotate them.

After three hours of cooking I removed them from the foil, covered them in a dry rub, and placed them over direct medium heat. After about ten minutes of cooking they were dry and falling off the bone delicious.

In general, I recommend always use baby back ribs for grilling purposes. Baby backs tend to be a little more expensive so for this grilling experience I used a mix of baby backs and other ribs.

Valentine's Dinner

To celebrate Valentine's Day I gave my wonderful wife a menu with two appetizer options, three main course options, and a couple of dessert options. I intended to cook everything on the grill. For the meat option I offered a chicken, a steak, and a fish. She, of course, chose steak. Here is a picture of the quesadillas and steaks cooking. The foil package is French bread.

Follow this link to my wife's blog to see how the evening turned out.

Sliders

I wanted to try something that I had never attempted so I decided on cooking "sliders". If you are familiar with Krystal or White Castle you have probably had one of these tiny burgers. The burgers were all the exact same size when they were placed on the grill-I used a small cookie cutter to try to make them the same. It was interesting how some shrank much more than others. I also cooked them on the charcoal side and had a "smoke pack" in the grill. The smoke pack caught on fire and flamed a couple of the burgers. We had a couple of other people join us for dinner and I tried to have enough for each of us to have three or four burgers.



One of the main reasons we wanted to cook burgers was a recent show on "The Food Network". It featured Pimento Cheese Burgers. Since Renie and I are both fans of Pimento Cheese we knew we wanted to try them. You can see the pimento cheese burger on the right and a regular cheese burger on the left. If you google pimento cheese burgers on the web you will find a few recipes. We just used store-bought pimento cheese and only light seasoned the burgers.

Here's to Good Friends...

Another steak night...we recently had a number of friends over for steak. Sweet potato fries were again the choice side dish since they are easy and delicious. The weather was not quite as cold as the previous few days so I took advantage of the opportunity to cook over charcoal. I am certainly ready for warmer weather!

Captain Rodney's Fish Plank

A new glaze that we have recently discovered is Captain Rodney's Boucan Glaze. You can find this delicious product on-line. However, to order one bottle the shipping cost was the same as the product...about $8.00. We asked our local Whole Foods to order it and it is now in stock in Birmingham. Though they ordered the small bottle it was much cheaper than $8.00.

We have both been craving grilled fish lately. A bag of frozen mahi mahi was fairly inexpensive so we thought that we would try them. The glaze was poured on the vegetables while we sauteed them in a skillet. The vegetables are leftovers from fajitas that we made last week and included red, yellow, and green peppers, and a small onion. After sauteing the vegetables we poured the vegetables over the raw fish with more Captain Rodney's Glaze.

The planked fish was cooked over medium indirect heat for about 20 minutes. No seasoning of any kind was added to the fish and it turned out okay. I added salt once it was on my plate and wanted the combination of sweet and salty. Renie preferred the sweet taste.

We will cook fish again soon but with so many wonderful grilled fish recipes I would prefer to save the Glaze for a delicious Boucan Cheese Dip. We were also pleased with the frozen fish. Though fresh fish would have been nice I know that you can't easily get fish in many parts of the country.

Cattle Exchange

Tonight I cooked fillet mignon on the grill. Another cold night in Birmingham. You can see the great crust rub on top of the fillet. The rub was my basic beef rub consisting mainly of salt, pepper, paprika, onion powder, and garlic powder. I have listed the amounts in several other posts.

The filet's were cooked for about six minutes on each side on medium-high heat. Another great experience cooking on gas. I may not go back to charcoal until winter is over.

The fillets were from the box that I bought from the Atlanta Cattle Exchange. Another great grilling experience with this company.