Archive for February, 2010

USA you rock. Thanks so much for coming out. Thanks for playing us so hard. It was awesome. You are a great country of terrific peopple but hockey is our game.

Now you know I love all my US friends and family. But this is hockey.This is our game. This is a matter of National Pride.

I believe. Go CANADA Go

Our father who art in Vancouver, hockey be thy name. Thy will be done, the gold will be won, on ice, as well as thy stands. Give us this day, Our hockey sticks, and forgive us our penalties as we forgive those who cross check against us. Lead us not into elimination, but deliver us to victory. In the name of the Canadian hockey team, AMEN. █ ♥ █ GO, CANADA, GO █ ♥ █

Just a reminder this weekend i’ll be here for 3 demonstrations daily in the Traeger Grill ZONE!

Ill be doing demonstrations on:

• Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs stuffed with cream cheese, pimento, onions, garlic, & spices all wrapped in Bacon!
• MOINK Balls (Bacon wrapped meatballs rubbed & sauced!)
• Cajun & Pineapple juice injected pork loin sandwich with caramelized onions and grilled pineapple

Hope to see you there!

My favorite charcoal Basques Charcoal and a sponsor of our BBQ team Diva Q will be available at Goemans this year. They will have the charcoal in their stores next week!!!

Goemans has 5 locations in Ontario:

• Kitchener
• London
• Mississauga
• St. Catharines
• Stoney Creek

The difference between Basques Hardwood Charcoal and the others

What essentially differs us from the competition is our hardwood charcoal. Our lump charcoal is made only with logs which have been selected cuts grown under regulated forest regeneration programs. In fact, you will not find any construction or destruction residue in our bags. That means no nails, pieces of metal or again charcoal which may look like a two by four.

Cooking on Basques Hardwood Charcoal

Basques charcoal: 100% natural hardwood * sugar Maple
Ingredients: 100% natural charcoal for a real wood-grilled flavour

Just an FYI we have announced two classes for 2010 with more dates being announced in the future. Please see our Classes tab for more information. Please note all of our past classes have sold out continuously so sign up soon.

This weekend Ill be with Traeger Canada in the Traeger Grill Zone at Bradford Greenhouses Garden Gallery in Barrie. Its a indoor show featuring lots of interesting indoor ideas, live stage shows and loads of fun. Bring the family! Best part is there is free admittance! Come meet Frankie Flowers as well Frank will be there on Sunday doing a demo on enviro gardening!

Well my day was filled with some lovely cold smoking.  Ian McKend sent me this unit to review.  See the above You tube video for more information about the product. Also here is the Company’s website.
I chose 5 types of cheese I already had in the fridge. Haloumi, cream cheese, a Maclarens Imperial Aged cheddar, and a couple of inexpensive blocks of Marble and Old Cheddar.

For the cheese project I decided to use my own smokin dust. The kit comes with Oak however I am not a huge fan and thought for the cheese that something a little more delicate would be better. I had a couple of bags of Smokinlicious products in the garage, pecan and mango. I think they were an excellent combination.

The kit isn’t very large at all. I will admit I really had my doubts about it effectiveness. How could such a simple tray filled with dust and a tea light impart that lovely smoky goodness on my cheese?

I filled in the two flavors of dust and got it started

So I loaded up my Traeger rib rack with the cheeses and set off for my nearest grill my little Tex. Its right at my backdoor. It has been heavily used over the years. I don’t take this one on the road with me it is my home unit.

About an hour into it I went to check on the cheese. I realized I had made a critical mistake in the placement of the cheese. I had put my beloved Aged cheddar directly over the unit causing some of it to melt.

A quick rearrangement of the cheese and we were once again on the road to cold smoked cheese.

After another hour and a half I pulled the cheese off.

the temperature never varied much above 90F the entire time. At 2.5 hours I think I had enough smoke on it – however next time I will let the aged cheddar go longer.

I am really impressed with the simplicity of this unit and how wonderful the flavor is on the cheese.I am already planning on lots of experiments this summer with it.  I highly recommend this unit for how effective and its ease of use. Now if you will excuse me I have to go make some smoked cheese nachos in preparation for the Canadian US hockey game tonight. It will be fun to watch Canada WIN while enjoying some of this smoked cheese.

I have been sicker than a dog this week and while trying to keep it all together I haven’t posted much on the blog. It was a busy week here with some interesting and new developments in the Diva Q BBQ world. Working on 2 commercial rubs that I hope to take to market.  Additionally I had a great time this week teaching 125 ladies all about Traegers at the Home Hardware Elmvale Ladies night.

Today however is a great day to get out and play on the grills. I have a couple of projects this weekend. First of all I still have to do one more chicken practice this weekend prepping for Little Rock. Second I will be trying out a new Cold Smoker attachment that was sent to me for review. Ill keep updating the blog throughout the weekend. Until then remember:

Life is too short for bad BBQ®

The NBBQA has published the list of their recent Awards of Excellence Award winners at the National BBQ Association Conference in Memphis this past Feb4, 2010
Congratulations to all the winners!!

As I was practicing chicken today I thought it would be a good idea to post about a few sauces I have recently acquired. All three have won various awards and it was easy to taste why.  I used all chicken thighs today. The rub on the thighs is the rub I use for competitions.  These are not my competition thighs these were the leftovers that I did not like the size and or shape of.

There are three new sauces I have never used before:

Heres how the color of the sauces compares:

Smoky Mountain Smokers Chipotle BBQ Sauce

Right out of the gate – I really liked this sauce a lot. Its got a great balance of heat and full bodied layered flavor. I love the flavor of chipotles and this sauce is packed with that wonderful flavor. I really do believe they have done a great job of layering in flavors. So many sauces are too one dimensional. This is more complicated. Its a really dark sauce in the bottle however when I used it on some of my reject chicken pieces today it wasn’t nearly as dark. It is not an overly thick sauce that you would have cut with something like apple juice. I would highly recommend it for your normal everyday use fridge stock.

Lambert’s Sweet Sauce o’Mine Barbecue

This is a really interesting sauce that I sure wouldn’t pass up. It’s very light at first. Light in flavor and as you continue eating it you get different levels of sweetness and heat. More on the fruity side it was really lovely on chicken. The sauce set up very nicely after putting it back on the heat for a few minutes. It wasn’t super sticky it just set up nicely.  It barely looked glazed however one bite in and it was full of flavor.  I am really looking forward to experimenting with this sauce on pork loins and other meats. I would highly recommend it.

Smoky Mountain Smokers Barbecue Sauce

I was really shocked at this sauce when I opened it up and tried it first on its own and then on some chicken.   I really think this is a sauce that would do really well in competition. It seems to hit a lot of the flavor profiles that I have been tasting in the last couple of years at competitions. It has notes of tamarind and black pepper. Two common ingredients in some of the competition sauces that are used by many. However this seems to take it a step further once again with the layering of flavors. Full of depth and continual flavor ending in a bit of residual heat that comes in on the end.  It is not the same as the other competition sauces I have used in the past but in my opinion it is better. Additionally it has that nice sheen to it when applied to chicken.  The color is great.  It has that really great mahogany hue. My pictures do not do it justice. I would highly recommend this sauce.