Posts Tagged ‘bbq’

One of my favorite things to do when we are traveling is to try new BBQ joints all over North America. I love the chance to visit with folks all over and to hear their stories and their BBQ methods.

I am not alone in this pursuit there are many folks and foodies that really enjoy the pursuit of BBQ. These are not high end edited videos. These are just people that are going out and sharing their love of BBQ with everyone out there.

One of those fine folks is Jim “Rhino” Reincke from Bandit BBQ a competition team and BBQ Caterer.He is also a member of the Illinois BBQ Society.

His video on You tube is a great example of the continual pursuit of BBQ.

Here is a video on a BBQ Snoot sandwich in Illinois

Check out his videos and commentary on his You Tube Channel.

This year I may even have to take out a video camera myself and share some of the places we stop along our travels. It seems like a great idea to share all these great and interesting places we stop at.

Well I am once again adding to my ever increasing list of BBQ books. The folks at Big Green Egg were kind enough to give me a copy of their latest book. Just for the record. I don’t have a Big Green Egg. Yet. I am a firm believer that having multiple types of grills is a good idea. They all have different personalities. I love my Traegers. I compete with my Traegers. I really do believe they are the easiest BBQ to own and to operate. So I am definitely a pellet head. However I love playing with charcoal too. Playing with fire can be a lot of fun and certainly a challenge at times. Some women collect shoes I prefer to collect BBQ’s. It makes the whole BBQ experience fun.

So the cookbook is really quite expansive. This is a big cookbook. 320 pages. It is a gorgeous cookbook to own. The pictures are incredible. The recipes many I have tried and would recommend -Smoke Beef Short Ribs done with hickory chips for example. I have found many of the recipes are easily transferable to other BBQ equipment in addition to Eggs.

Some of the recipes also use the stove top (ex Kale on page 307 with the apple wood smoked bacon). It is a delicious recipe.

I like the format of this cookbook. I enjoyed reading the Chef & Pitmaster Biographies. Overall this has to be one of the best laid out cookbooks for BBQ I have ever seen. Plus God bless them they realize there are Canadians and International Folks that BBQ since they even included a Metric Conversion table as well.

From the Gourmet (ex Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Creme Fraiche & Caviar) to the most basic (ex Italian Sausage subs) this cookbook has it all for anyone who loves to grill & BBQ. I would highly recommend it for the recipes whether you own a Big Green Egg or other grill/bbq.

Theres a new website online for sharing videos, BBQ tips and creating more BBQ communities:

www.GrillQ.com

Check it out and upload, watch and share your BBQ!

This Friday I’ll be at the Chadwick & Hacks booth at the Ideal Home & Garden Show in Hamilton Ontario as well as I’ll be on stage doing a BBQ presentation from 5-540pm. 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.

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.