Labor Day 2009 Steak Dinner

There are two holidays that just scream BBQ to me, Memorial Day and Labor Day.  The former being the de-facto start of Summer and the latter being the end.

At our house baked potatoes or french fries are the standard side dish with steak.  This time we decided something else was in order.  After consulting one of our many BBQ cookbooks we decided on a version of “Roasted Smashed Sweet Potatoes” from Ted Reader’s King of the Q’s Blue Plate BBQ cookbook.

First step was to put a couple of sweet potatoes on the Traeger at 350 degrees.

When the sweet potatoes had been on for about 30 minutes I started a full chimney of charcoal.  Lighter fluid is never allowed on the property so a couple sheets of newspaper with a drizzle of vegetable oil get the chimney started quickly.

I’m convinced it doesn’t take any longer to get charcoal ready using a chimney than it does using the “lighter fluid”  shortcut.

At 350 degrees it took about 50 minutes to get the sweet potatoes done.

Once the sweet potatoes were cooled slightly they were peeled and combined with a little butter, brown sugar and green onion.  We adjusted the recipe a little by adding a topping of brown sugar and ground pecans.

The sweet potatoes with the topping was put back on the Traeger and then moved over the the Weber kettle while the steaks were grilling.

A couple pictures of the sweet potatoes:

Plated up the steaks, green beans and sweet potatoes:

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper were the only seasonings on the steaks.  I made a compound butter of unsalted butter and Todd’s Bayou Dirt.  It added a nice subtle extra kick to the steaks.  And a little on the green beans was fantastic too.