Grilling | onedadskitchen

Nothing goes better with grilled food than some good beers (okay, sometimes a good sangria will work too) and this article gives you some great pairing ideas for beer and grilling menus. Check it out and give them a try! i know I will!

7 Common Grilled Chicken Mistakes: BA Daily: bonappetit.com

24 May

7 Common Grilled Chicken Mistakes: BA Daily: bonappetit.com.

With grilling season upon us, here are some good tips for grilling chicken. I had planned to grill some chicken today, but since it is raining here in new York, I had to improvise. You’ll see what I did shortly, but in the meantime, check out these tips from Bon Appetit!

101 Recipes for the Grill: bonappetit.com

23 May

101 Recipes for the Grill: bonappetit.com.

With the summer season about to get under way with the long weekend, Bon Appetit has this great article with 101 grilling recipes to cover everything that you may want to grill. You should check it out!

Grilling some BBQ Ribs and Some Meals This Week, Wow!

21 May

I Have gotten way off schedule lately. Michelle has been working a lot of hours, Sean’s school is winding down and I started a new work project that takes a lot of my time, so I haven’t had much time for blogging on either blog lately, but I also have gotten away from our meal plan for the last few weeks. We are going to try to get back to it this week, so hopefully it all works out. In the meantime, while I am not grilling today because we are getting heavy rain here in New York, I did grill yesterday and made some Barbecued Pork Ribs. Now I have made baby back ribs on here before (check here for the recipe), but spare ribs were on sale at the supermarket last week so I got some and made them yesterday and they turned out great. It’s a simple recipe, but they take a long time to cook, which actually gave me a bit of an advantage using the electric grill over charcoal and gas, although maintaining the proper heat levels on the electric grill can get a little tricky. You really have to watch the temperature gauge closely to make sure its working out. Any type of grill will work with this, you just need to keep checking and rotating the ribs. This recipe, from America’s Test Kitchen, is written for a gas grill.

Barbecue Pork Ribs

2 full racks spareribs (2 to 3 pounds each)

1/2 cup Barbecue Spice Rub (This is the same rub I used on the pulled pork a couple of weeks ago, I always make extra to have to use for ribs, burgers, steaks, chicken, etc. You can get the recipe here or I will list it below)

2 cups wood chips, soaked and drained

2 cups barbecue sauce

Massage the ribs all over with the rub and let them stand at room temperature, covered loosely with plastic wrap, for 1 hour. Place the wood chips in a disposable aluminum tray (I actually have a small cast iron smoker box I use) and rest the tray directly on top of the primary burner. Turn all the burners to high, close the lid, and heat the grill until very hot and the chips are smoking, about 15 minutes. Clean and oil the grill. Turn the primary burner down to medium and turn off the other burners.

Position the ribs over the cooler part of the grill and cover. Barbecue until the meat starts to pull away from the bones, 3 to 4 hours, flipping, switching and rotating the ribs every 30 minutes. The temperature inside the grill should remain between 300 and 275 degrees. brush the ribs with barbecue sauce during the final 15 minutes of cooking.

Since I was using the electric grill, I had to pay particular attention the temperature. There really aren’t any cool spots to speak of when using electric since the element covers a lot of the surface area, so I would have to make sure to rotate and flip and keep the ribs to the edges of the grill. It took some work, but they were fall off the bone tasty. If you want the barbecue spice rub, here it is:

Barbecue Spice Rub

1/2 cup chili powder

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup salt

2 tablespoons black pepper

2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

Mix all the ingredients until well combined. Store in an airtight container. It will last for about 1 month.

As I said, I use it for a lot of different things, like chicken, steak and shrimp and burgers, but you can use it for whatever you would like. I served the ribs with some of the leftover beans we had frozen from the pulled pork dinner, some corn on the cob, and some potato salad. It was a great Sunday meal.

As for the rest of the week, tonight I am making Pepper Steak, which I have made before on here and you can get the recipe right here. For the rest of the week, I did buy the meat necessary, I just haven’t decided what to make yet, so it will be wait and see when you check on here to see what the meal will be. I did buy some pork chops, a whole cut up chicken, some frozen shrimp and some chicken legs (I’ll probably use some of these to make chicken stock). I’ll have to see what kind of recipes I can come up with. Any suggestions? Any input at all would be greatly appreciated any time. You can leave a comment here, on my Facebook page or on Twitter. Until the next meal, enjoy your day and enjoy your meal!

1 Comment

Posted by MikeG on May 21, 2012 in Cooking, Dinner, Grilling, Pork, Potatoes, Side Dishes

Tags: barbecue pork ribs, barbecued beans, barbecued pork ribs, bbq beans, bbq pork ribs, bbq spice rub, grilling, potato salad, spare ribs, spice rub

Time to Get Your Grill On

18 May

It’s a beautiful day here in New York and it seemed like a good time to do some grilling. I have a boneless turkey breast, and I thought that would be great on the grill with some potato packets and some grilled asparagus, So let’s go for it!

Grilled Turkey London Broil

2 pounds turkey London broil (this is just one boneless turkey breast)

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons Montreal Chicken Seasoning

1/4 cup white wine

1 teaspoon honey

Mix all the ingredients together for the marinade and whisk until well blended. In a large plastic storage bag, place the turkey and then cover with the marinade. Close the bag tightly, letting the air out, and mix so the marinade covers the turkey. Refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.

Heat a grill until medium-warm. Remove the turkey from the bag and reserve the marinade. Place the turkey and the grill and cover the grill. Cook for approximately 30 minutes per pound brushing often with the marinade (turkey can get dry, so you need to do this) and turning often. The turkey is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 170 degrees. Allow to rest after removing it from the grill before slicing and serving.

I like to use the Montreal chicken seasoning with turkey. It’s a nice blend of spices and gives some good flavor. I use it with ground turkey all the time when making chili or turkey burgers.

The potato packets are pretty easy too. My Dad used to make these all the time, and God bless him, he tried, but he inevitably burned these a lot, but Dad also never used an oil or anything inside the packets to help with the cooking. They come out fine with some oil or butter. I only make this to serve the three of us, so you can adjust the recipe for more or less people.

Grilled Potato Packets

3 medium potatoes, scrubbed and sliced

3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced

1/2 onion, diced

Salt and pepper, to taste

3 tablespoons butter, sliced into 3 slices and then cubed

Cooking spray

Tear off three large sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Spray each sheet with cooking spray. Using 1 potato, place a layer of potatoes in the middle of each sheet (try to keep it to one layer if you can). Cover the potato with one of the sliced carrots and then sprinkle with some onion. Season with salt and pepper. Place one of the cubed slices on top of the vegetables, spreading out the cubes over so they will melt into the vegetables when cooking. Wrap the potato tightly in the foil, folding it over the potato so the packet is thin (if it’s too thick it will take longer to cook). Repeat the process with the remaining potatoes. Place the packets on the hot grill, cover the grill and cook, turning about every 10 minutes, until the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes. Serve.

I tried to keep the vegetable simple to by just using grilled asparagus. Nice and easy and only take about 5 minutes.

Grilled Asparagus

1 pound asparagus, the tough ends cut trimmed off

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper, to taste

Toss the asparagus with the olive oil to coat the asparagus. Season with salt and pepper. Place the asparagus on the grill in a single layer over medium-high heat. Grill, turning often, until the asparagus are bright green and tender, about 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and serve.

That’s all there is to it. A pretty simple, grilled meal on a nice evening. You can sit outside, enjoy the meal, have a nice glass of wine and enjoy. Until next time, enjoy your evening, and enjoy your meal!

1 Comment

Posted by MikeG on May 18, 2012 in Cooking, Dinner, Grilling, Potatoes, Turkey, Vegetables

Tags: boneless turkey breast, grilled asparagus, grilling turkey breast, potato packets, turkey london broil

Crashing Computers, a Busy Sunday, And a Week’s Worth of Recipes

07 May

Well my computer up and died on me last week and I haven’t been able to do much until today. I am back on my feet now with a new laptop and can get back to working and blogging. We had a very busy day yesterday that included a very extensive meal. It was busy and I was cooking for hours, but it was very enjoyable and the meal turned out quite well. So well in fact, that it gave me recipes to use for the entire week! This is what we have to look forward to as far as posts:

Monday (today): Smoked Barbecued Pulled Pork

Tuesday: Barbecued Baked Beans in the slow cooker

Wednesday: German Potato Salad

Thursday: Homemade Salsa, Guacamole, Nachos and Ranch Dressing,

Friday: Easy Blueberry Pie

I made a lot of things yesterday when we had some guests over and started cooking at 8 AM so I could get everything done in time. The centerpiece of the meal was pulled pork. I have made pulled pork before, but the weather is getting nicer, so I decided I was going to incorporate the grill into this meal and use it for the pork. This is not a difficult recipe, but I did have to make a few adjustments. Since we live in a condo, here in New York you are not allowed to have a gas or charcoal grill near the structure, so we do have a nice sized electric grill that I use. It does affect the cooking, and I would rather use a gas grill, but the law’s the law and I have to go with it so we use the electric. It’s harder to control the heat since you can’t control heat distribution, so if you have gas or charcoal I think this will work better for you, but I was able to make it work with electric. The recipe itself, from America’s Test Kitchen, is written to use on a gas grill.

Barbecued Pulled Pork

1 (6 to 8 pound) Boston Pork Butt

1/2 cup chili powder

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup salt

2 tablespoons black pepper

2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

4 cups wood chips, soaked and drained

Vegetable oil

2 cups barbecue sauce

Mix the chili powder, brown sugar, salt black pepper and cayenne pepper until well combined. Massage the pork all over with the rub and let it stand at room temperature, covered loosely with plastic wrap, for 1 hour.

Place the wood chips in a disposable tray and rest the tray directly on top of the primary burner. Turn all the burners to high, close the lid and heat the grill until very hot and the chips are smoking, about 15 minutes. Clean and oil the grill. Turn the primary burner down to medium and turn off the other burners.

Place the pork in an aluminum roasting pan and position the pan over the cooler part of the grill. Barbecue, covered, for 4 hours, flipping and rotating the meat every hour. (The temperature inside the grill should remain between 275 and 300 degrees,)

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 300 degrees. Remove the pan of pork from the grill, wrap tightly with heavy-duty foil, and transfer to the oven. Continue to cook in the oven until the meat is for tender, 1 to 2 hours. Remove the roast from the oven and let rest (without removing the foil) for 30 minutes.

Transfer the roast to a carving board and, when cool enough to handle, “pull” the pork by tearing the meat into thin shreds with your fingers (I used two forks to shred it myself), Place the shredded meat in a large bowl. Toss with 1 cup of the barbecue sauce, adding more to taste. Serve, passing the remaining sauce separately.

A couple of notes about the recipe. I was still able to use the wood chips, putting some in a cast iron smoker box I have and laying that under the heating element of the grill. It did create enough smoke to do the job. I also tried to keep the pork in the pan toward the outer edge of the grill surface since the electrical element of the grill is right in the center. I think this helped keep it on the cooler part of the grill. I think you could easily do the whole recipe on the grill, leaving it on the grill for the extra 1 to 2 hours instead of transferring to the oven, if that’s what you wanted to do, and it will turn out fine. The recipe recommends that you serve the pork with plain white bread, but I went with small rolls instead. I’m not a big fan of white bread, but use what you like best. Of course, I did serve it with pickle chips and the pickles do add a nice flavor to the sandwich if that’s the way you want to eat it. I also dressed the pork with a little less barbecue sauce and let people add their own to it if they wanted it. To me, this way if you would rather taste the smoke and the flavor of the rub over the sauce you could.

I wish I had taken pictures of the whole meal, but with my computer not working and all the time in the kitchen, by the time I thought of it, it was too late. Everyone took some leftovers home with them and we have enough left here for another meal for Michelle, Sean and myself. Tomorrow I will provide the recipe for one of the side dishes we had, which was barbecued baked beans done in the slow cooker. Until then, enjoy your day and enjoy your meal!