For Sunday Dinner this week, I grilled Philly Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers. The recipe was from Another Pint Please.
Mini Apple and Pork Festival
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For Sunday Dinner this week, we had our own mini Apple and Pork Festival. I used another recipe from our go-to source, Dad Cooks Dinner. This time it was boneless pork chops with apple cider brine and apple butter glaze. For sides, I cooked potatoes in a foil pan on the grill and made some wilted greens with balsamic vinegar on the stovetop. Then for dessert, I layered some thin Granny Smith Apple slices in a pan with brown sugar and cinnamon and baked it on the grill, topped with Cheddar Cheese and served with vanilla ice cream.
This is how the chops looked on the grill. They had some of the best quadrillage I’ve ever gotten.
In the upper right corner of this shot, you can see my technique for getting some smoke flavor into the food on a gas grill. I simply put a chunk of wood on the grate above one of the burners. If it starts to actually flame, I move it down into the smoker box after snuffing. This seems to work better than soaking chips and putting them into the box, which is the recommended method from Weber.
Grilling Jack Daniels Pork Chops
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For Sunday dinner yesterday, I grilled pork chops, marinated in Jack Daniels brine and finished with Jack Daniels glaze.
It’s another one of Mike Vrobel’s creations. I substituted Jack for the Jim Beam in his original recipe.
We served this with Wulff Salad, mustard potato salad and a wonderful cauliflower with mustard and cheese sauce that my wife makes.
We also had a growler of Lumpy Dog Brown ale from Rock Bottom to add to the fun.
Salsiccia con Peperoni
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I cooked the peppers and onions in a pan on the grill, grilled the Italian Sausages, and then added them to a pan where I had sautéed garlic in olive oil, and finally stirred in some fresh-picked oregano and basil.
We served it with mostaccioli.
Longing for Micheladas
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With a deep snow cover here, and more on the way over the weekend, I am longing for a hot Summer day on the back patio with a nice Michelada.
Stay warm, people. Spring is just around the corner, right?
Rotisserie Chicken
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When my wife gave me a rotisserie attachment for our Weber Kettle at Christmas 2012, the first thing I cooked on it was a whole chicken. After a year of experience, I think I’ve finally mastered the process.
I cooked a five pound chicken for Sunday dinner this week, and it turned out better than any I’ve ever made or tasted. I dry brined with salt and pepper on Saturday evening, then sprinkled on some Herbs de Provence and garlic powder before it went on the grill. It took a little over an hour to cook. We served it with drip pan potatoes, salad and green beans.
Learning this recipe changed my entire approach to cooking on the Weber. If you’re interested in the rotisserie, take a look at Mike Vrobel’s blog. His book is the bible on rotisserie cooking outdoors.
Ham-Wrapped Asparagus Batons
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For Sunday Brunch this morning, I grilled some asparagus wrapped in ham.
I put the asparagus on a perforated Weber grill pan, hit it with some olive oil spray and sprinkled with kosher salt and cracked black pepper. Grilled it for five minutes or so that way (flipping the asparagus over once) and then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese before wrapping in the ham. Then it all went back on the grill for just a few more minutes to finish.
We served it with a drizzle of Dijon mustard and honey as a condiment, along with some toast and fresh fruit.
Simple and delicious.
So, How’d The Turkey Turn Out?
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My apologies for not posting this earlier. I’m sure that you’ve been waiting impatiently to hear how our Thanksgiving Turkey turned out on the rotisserie.
I did make some adjustments from the trial run, using a fresh turkey, taking care to properly dry brine and stuff the bird, using hickory wood for smoke, and icing the breast prior to cooking to help keep it rarer. After the charcoal was nearly gone under the rotisserie, I moved the turkey to the gas grill to finish cooking so that I could use a probe thermometer to monitor doneness more easily.
In short, it turned out really well. Here are just a couple of observations.
1) I’m not sure that I’d spend the money on a fresh bird again. This one turned out better than the trial run bird, but I’m not sure that it can be attributed to a fresh bird. I expected it to be “out of this world” better than any turkey I’d ever tasted, and it just wasn’t. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing notable in texture or taste that is distinctive to it not having been frozen. If a frozen bird is good enough for Alton Brown, I’ll save myself $60 next year.
2) My wife thought this was the best turkey she’d ever tasted. My father-in-law thought that the dark meat was a little dry. I thought that the doneness and texture was perfect, but it was missing a savoriness for me. This may be because I’m used to turkeys that come “pre-basted.” We’ll see if next time the combination of pre-basting for flavor and my own dry brining for additional flavor and texture will strike the right balance. The worst thing you can say about a Butterball or other pre-basted bird is that you’re essentially paying for brine. As cheap as supermaket birds are, I won’t object to that.
Part of the issue may be that I’m comparing the rotisserie turkey to rotisserie chicken, which always seems to turn out mouth-watering delicious. I want the turkey to be like that. Guess we’ll just have to keep working at it.
Or maybe I should cook chickens for Thanksgiving next year.
Boston Butt on the Rotisserie
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My wife brought home a six pound pork roast on Saturday, and we hadn’t planned Sunday Dinner yet, so I decided to roast it on the rotisserie. I adapted the recipe from the Weber iPad App for Rotisserie Pork Roast with Bourbon Mop. As it turns out, I ended up using some leftover apple juice and vinegar for the mopping, but I did use something akin to the rub from the recipe, and it made a beautiful crust.
- 2 t Black Pepper
- 2 t Mustard
- 2 T Turbinado Sugar
- 1 t Onion Powder
- 1 t Garlic Powder
- 1 t Paprika
- 1 T Kosher Salt
I trussed the roast and then spread the rub on generously, covered with plastic and put it in the fridge overnight. Here’s a shot of the roast, trussed and rubbed.
Sunday around Noon, I lit an entire chimney of Kingsford and divided it into two piles on either side of the charcoal grate with an aluminum drip pan in between them. The water from soaking apple chips went in to the pan, along with some apple juice and a bottle of Schlitz. After the grill preheated, I added the chips to the coals, placed the rotisserie spit with the roast in place and started the motor.
After the first hour, I started basting the roast with my apple juice and vinegar solution, giving it a good dousing every twenty minutes or so.
After about two and a half hours, the internal temperature of the meat was around 140 F, and my charcoal was nearly gone, so I moved the roast over to a pan in the middle of the gas grill, with side burners on medium and the center burner off. I kept the temperature of the grill around 370, and once the meat was up to 180 (measured by a dual probe thermometer) I took it off to rest under a foil tent until it was time to serve.
My wife had prepared some red potatoes and some Brussels sprouts for roasting, so once the meat was off I turned up the grill a bit and roasted them with a little olive oil, salt and cracked pepper. A nice fresh salad with Wulff family vinaigrette was the finishing touch to a wonderful meal.
It was nice to have my sons joining us for the weekend, and for the meal. I’m hoping that one day if they decide to try their hand at outdoor cooking, I’ll be able to pass along some recipes and techniques. If nothing else, the memories of their dad standing out by a Weber Kettle ought to be fairly vivid.
Chorizo and Pork Burgers
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Here’s another recipe from Chef Purviance that I’ve grilled twice in the past few months, most recently for Sunday Dinner. I don’t make the Jalepeno slaw, but the Chorizo/Pork burgers are a delightful departure from typical burger fare. I also make some of the patties without Chorizo for my daughter and others who don’t like as much spice.