Writing this blog is a hoot!

Every once in a while someone on Twitter or Facebook will ask a question or post a comment and it triggers something in my brain. It’s just something that happens.  I’m minding my own business and all of a sudden I’m thinking about something different.  A couple of days a go someone on Twitter sent out a tweet about pulled pork and a little while later there was a mention of waffles.  It was lunch time here in Northern California and the Pulled Pork and Waffle Sliders just popped into my head.

But wait, there’s more!

I mentioned the idea on Twitter and there were actually a few doubting Thomas’.  Well, here’s my answer to those that doubted The BBQ Grail!  (You can’t see it, but my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek)

Waffles are breakfast food.  You might eat them for dinner, but more often than not when you do it’s called Breakfast for Dinner.  So the BBQ Sauce had to be sort of BBQ like.  What goes with waffles?  Maple syrup.  So I had to have a Maple flavor in the sauce.  And it had to have a little kick!

Maple Chipotle BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup onion, chopped as fine as you can get
• 3/4 cup Grade A Dark Amber “Real” Maple Syrup
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon Art of Chipotle Gourmet Paste

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently until combined.  Cook for five minutes.  Using an immersion blender or food processor puree until a smooth consistency.  Let it cool a little and serve.

After making the waffles I let them cool, just a little, on a rack and then cut them into rounds.  Piled the pulled pork on top and spoon the BBQ sauce over the top.  The flavor was spot on.  The waffles were a little wimpy in texture but the waffle flavor complimented the sauce and pulled pork perfectly.  This might make a nice little breakfast treat the next time I need something special.

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I was an early adopter of Bacon Salt and have sung it’s praises ever since the first time I sprinkled it on my eggs one morning.  A few years later along came Baconnaise, a tasty mixture of bacon and mayonnaise.  I’ve been a devoted user ever since.  So when Justin Esch emailed me recently to ask if I wanted to try Bacon Croutons I said yes.  Even before they arrived I started to think about how I was going to use them.  Croutons are normally found on salads.  But it wasn’t likely that I was going to waste the goodness of bacon on a salad.  I had to come up with something more exciting than lettuce.

Over on Pork, Knife and Spoon I have been working on a series of blog posts on pork ribs.  I had some rib trimmings left over and it occurred to me that a Pulled Pork Cake, much along the lines of a crab cake could be a beautiful and tasty creation.  Usually I start my recipe development with a bit of internet and cookbook research.  My search for “pork cakes” lead to very little information but it did lead me to an actual pork cake.   I figured the best way to do a pulled pork cake was to make them as similar to a crab cake as possible.

I made up the pulled pork cakes, following the recipe below, and as I was getting ready to pan fry them the bag of J&D Bacon Croutons were staring across the kitchen counter at me.  It’s almost as if they were speaking to me.  It was in that brief moment that inspiration struck.  I decided to crush the Bacon Croutons and use them to bread the pulled pork cakes.  It’s not the first time I’ve had inspiration in the kitchen, but rarely does that inspiration come out as good as this one did.  The combination of the pulled pork, seasoning and bacon created a fantastic flavor profile.  I’m going to be making these pulled pork cakes when I have left over pulled pork.

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Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011-2012 Larry Gaian

There is a school of thought that soaking meat in a marinade doesn’t do all that much.  I pretty much subscribe to that thought process.  A lot of times when you buy a bottle of marinade it suggests a 30 minute marinade time.  That’s the case with the KC Masterpiece Buffalo marinade.  I went with a 2 hour soak time and don’t think it imparted a great deal of flavor in the meat.  Certainly not as much as you’d like in a “buffalo chicken” dish.  But, there was away around this little problem.  I not only did the marinate thing I used it as a glaze too.

I wasn’t in the mood for chicken wings so I decided a “chicken wing” inspired sandwich would be the way to go.  Check out the great dish I came up with.

When it comes to grilling chicken I am a big fan of thighs.  Okay, it doesn’t matter if it’s grilled, fried or roasted, my favorite piece of chicken is the thigh.  But I digress…

I took a couple of chicken thighs, removed the skin and trimmed as much fat off of them as I could.  The trimmed thighs were put in a bowl and covered with the KC Masterpiece Buffalo marinade.

The flavor of this “buffalo” sauce is very, very tasty.  Just the right amount of heat.  As you can see from the label KC Masterpiece thinks it’s HOT.  And right out of the bottle it does have a little kick.  This kick doesn’t transfer to the meat all that much after the cooking process.  But the marinade does have that stereotypical buffalo flavor.  And that’s good a thing.  There’s nothing worse than ordering anything “buffalo” and having it not taste of that wonderful red pepper/cayenne flavor.

 I grilled the chicken on the Weber kettle over medium high heat until it was done.  After removing the chicken from the grill I noticed the flavor just didn’t have the kick I would have expected.  It had a very nice grilled, buffalo chicken flavor but lacked the heat I wanted.  So I mixed a half cup of fresh marinade (don’t use the stuff you used on the chicken) and mixed it with a couple of tablespoons of honey.  I put the chicken back on the grilled and glazed it with the honey buffalo sauce.  Bingo…heat and sweet all in once.

When I think of buffalo chicken wings I also think of Bleu Cheese dressing.  A buffalo chicken sandwich wouldn’t be complete without something bleu cheese on it.  I decided a bleu cheese sauce would be proper.  So I quickly came up with something.  And truth be told I think the bleu cheese sauce came out amazing. 

Grail’s Quick & Easy Bleu Cheese Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mayo
• 1 tablespoon Saco Cultured Buttermilk Blend
• Bleu Cheese crumbles
• Milk

Directions:

Mix mayo, buttermilk blend, bleu cheese and two tablespoons of milk until blended.  Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.  Just before use thin with more milk until you have a sauce that’s easy to spread.

Get yourself some slaw and place it on your bread.  A layer of nice chopped up buffalo chicken thighs and top with some of the bleu cheese sauce.

This sandwich was fantastic!  I loved the flavor of the buffalo marinade along with the tang of the bleu cheese sauce.  It was so, so good.  You’ve just got to give this a try.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

I’m not sure exactly how original my creations are but it’s pretty much all I could come up with. Hot Dogs with a Blueberry aioli didn’t exactly make sense so Beanie Weanie seemed to make some sense. As a kid, and even today, I love to slice up a couple (okay, maybe three or four) good hot dogs and after pan frying them toss in a can of pork and beans. Add some spices, some ketchup and a little hot sauce and I’ve got a lunch that warms the innards.

I also wanted to use the cast iron skillet I had just, the day before, lovingly re-seasoned. The whole mixture was cooked in the skillet in the Traeger and turned out pretty darn tasty. This is one of those recipes that would need a little added flavoring with spices to get just right. Or I might use blueberry pie filling instead of blueberry syrup next time. (I just thought of the blueberry pie filling while writing them, I wish I’d thought about sooner because that would have been even better.)

And I did use canned beans this time around. This has been a crazy month, so far, and I just didn’t leave myself enough time to use dried beans. And if I told the truth I don’t think it would have made a lot of difference.

Smoked Blueberry Beanie Weenie

Ingredients

• 2 cans (14 oz) S&W White Kidney Beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (14 oz) S&W White Beans
• 3/4 cups Blueberry Syrup
• 1/2 cup tomato ketchup
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 2 teaspoons dry mustard
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 slices bacon, chopped
• Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

Directions:

Pre-heat your smoker to 275 degrees (or oven if you feel you must)

Drain the beans in a mesh strainer. Rinse off all the bean slime and set aside.

Fry the chopped bacon until the fat is rendered. Don’t over cook. You don’t want it crispy. Remove bacon and set aside. Saute the onions until soft. Add all the ingredients and stir to mix well. Use 1/2

Place the bean mixture, in the cast iron skillet in your smoker and cook for about three hours. Add the hot dogs to the top and continue cooking until the hot dogs are warmed, about 30 minutes. Take them out and serve them!

For the dill pickles I decided the best way to handle them, because I was smart enough to not put them in the beans, was to batter and fry them. I had also made up some crappy corn bread (See my request here) and used a little diluted corn bread batter. The fried pickles with some ranch dressing were actually pretty darn tasty.

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

Paul Haight of No Excuses BBQ – ENTRY HERE

The No Excuses BBQ website was started in January of 2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of cooking outdoors at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world. Somewhere along the way things got out of control…

Bob Fukushima of Bob’s Brew & Que – ENTRY HERE

Bob started Bob’s Brew and ‘Que in August of 2009 with the intent of sharing his views on food and drink. Originally focused on BBQ and Homebrew, it was inevitable that the influences of his upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area and it’s wealth of ingredients as well as his heritage as an American of Japanese ancestry would help focus his blog, as it has his approach to food and drink.

Jason Adams of Jason’s BBQ Adventures – ENTRY HERE

Jason’s BBQ Adventures was started in 2007 when Jason fell in love with real BBQ the first time and tried to smoked a pork shoulder and soon after started smoking ribs, brisket, and chicken. After a while he started to experiment with grilling and smoking just about anything and ultimately fell in love with the entire cooking process.

Hanneke Eerden of The Dutchess Cooks – ENTRY HERE

After years of cooking, grilling, baking and reading other people’s blogs, I thought “why not start my own blog??” And I did, in 2010, but already after a short period of time, a blog wasn’t enough, and I started my own website. It’s not my goal to publish or come up with fancy and difficult recipes: just good and delicious food with an international twist! Straight from my plate to yours!

Marc Van Der Wouw of Grill Adventures-ENTRY HERE

Grilladventures by broadcastmarc is started on march of 2010.I started the BBQ thing when I was 30,before that we eat a lot outside.have fun,but when the kids came in our life We start serious cooking.Most of it is realy healthy I think;-)The grill has a special place in my heart,We love to do things outside..Everything I make is an adventure,and sometimes we use the books.We try to grill as much as we can year round.

Chris of Nibble Me This – ENTRY HERE

The Nibble Me This website was created to share Chris’ misadventures in live fire cooking. ”I have no culinary training….I’m just entertaining myself with fire and food”.

And this month we welcome Wilfred Reinke from Oshawa, Canada!

Wilfred Reinke of The Oshawa Ogre – ENTRY HERE

Wilfred is somewhat of a newcomer to the BBQ scene having only done standard grilling for most of his 50 years, He found and became passionate about Low & Slow about 2 years ago. and that passion also morphed into a second hobby which is writing. Oshawa Ogre’s Views News & BBQ’s has been a project that has taken on a life of it’s own and blessed him with many many new friends in the BBQ community on Twitter, facebook and through the blog.

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Look, I’ve shared a lot of different recipes here and strive to help anyone and everyone that asks for cooking advice.  Well I need some!  I need some good corn bread recipes and I’d like to ask my readers to share yours with me and world (well at least the miniscule part of the world that reads this blog).  Do you have a great corn bread recipe?  Will you share with us?

May I also ask another favor, on top of the first one?  Please write out your recipe (or cut and past it) in the comment section.   You can leave a link to your blog and you’ll get all the credit you want for the recipe.  And I won’t republish them anywhere without asking your permission.

Corn bread and BBQ go so well together and I’d like to get some great recipes to share.

What do you say?  Won’t you help a guy out?

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I actually don’t like the flavor cedar imparts on my meats and other grilled foods.  It would never occur to me to use cedar in my normal low & slow BBQ smoking so I figure why use it for planking.  Instead I use the same woods I use to smoke with, alder, maple, cherry, apple and oak

Today’s entry for my week-long series on “plank” grilling is pork loin on alder planks.  The alder planks are “Chef Locke Interlocking Planks” from TailgatingPlanks.  The nice thing about these planks is because they are interlocking you have a choice with what size you use.  I really liked these planks.  Unlike some planks these did not have a tendency to curl or bend in the middle part way through the cooking process.  My only caution is to make sure they have the locked together when you soak them.

The process for pork loin is the same as yesterday’s post on cooking chicken on wine vines.  Soak, soak, soak the plank.  Some instructions for planks recommend soaking anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.  I always soak for a minimum of one hour.  I don’t think you can soak a plank too long.

I took each pork loin and trimmed off any excess pieces of dangling fat and any silver skin that was still attached.   Some people recommend leaving the silver skin on because they feel it adds a layer of fat, but I never see any fat with the silver skin and in my experience leaving it on can lead to a tougher piece of meat when the silver skin starts to shrink.

Once the loins are nicely trimmed rub them with just a little olive oil.  You don’t want them dripping with oil but instead a nice even coating that makes the meat glisten.  Season the loin with your spice/rub mixture of choice and set it aside for a couple of minutes.  I seasoned my loins with Instant Gourmet “Rustic Italiano.”

I like to have my pork loins as close to room temperature as possible so I’m not putting ice-cold mean on the planks.  So, while the meat is sitting remove the planks from the water and towel dry them.

Put your planks in the center of your pre-heated grates and allow the wood to heat up.  When the planks start to smolder slightly and burn on the edges, turn the heat down to medium and quickly put a light layer of oil on the planks.  Put your loins on the planks and close the lid.

Give the pork loins about 20 minutes on the planks and check the temperature.  Have a small water bottle handy to spritz any flare-ups while the lid is open.

Cook the pork loins until they reach an internal temperature of 130 degrees.  DO NOT take the pork loins above 130 degrees or you will end up with shoe leather.

Trust me on this, please.  If you follow these instructions you will end up with moist pork that is properly cooked, not the dried out pieces of pork you get if you cook it to 165 degrees.

When the pork reaches 130 degrees turn you grill up to high and remove the planks.  Quickly sear the pork loins on all sides.  Do this on a grill that’s as hot as you can get it.  Do it quick!  Once you have all sides seared remove the loins to a plate and loosely cover the them with foil.  Let them rest for 20 minutes.

The Cola Balsamic reduction when well with the Italian seasoning I used on the pork loin.  I recommend cooking up the reduction before you even start the pork loin cooking process.  The pork loin cooks fast and it’s easier to keep an eye on the pork loin when you don’t have to worry about stirring the reduction.

The reduction is simple to make.  Pour a bottle of GUS (Grown Up Soda) Dry Cola into a small saucepan.  Using medium heat reduce the cola by one half.  The reason I like to use GUS soda is they are low in sugar.  There are lots of sauces and reductions that use sodas but they are often just to sweet.  By using a low sugar soda you can add sugar and get just the right amount of sweetness.

Once the cola has reduced add the balsamic vinegar to taste.  I added 2 tablespoons.  You want the bite of the vinegar but don’t want it to overpower the cola flavor.  Now add enough palm sugar so that it’s barely sweet.  I use palm sugar in this type of reduction because it melts like brown sugar but gives you a nice caramel flavor profile that compliments the cola and balsamic vinegar.

If the reduction was made the day before, heat it up while your pork loin is resting.  Slice the pork loin, plate it and spoon a little of the reduction over the top.  Serve immediately so it doesn’t cool too much.

Later in the week there you’ll get a couple of recipes for potatoes that will pair very nicely with this dish.

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When I was growing up one of the meals my mom used to make was a stuffed bell pepper.  Made with ground beef, rice and tomato of some type it was a favorite of hers.  As a kid I was never very fond of eating the bell pepper but my adult pallette is much more agreeable with peppers now.  I decided to use a nice poblano better instead of a bell pepper.

I think this was a good start to what, I hope, will be a great recipe for my friend.  The flavor was a little mild and the BBQ sauce I used for the glaze didn’t compliment the rub I used for the seasoning.  I smoked the whole chub of hamburger so I got plenty of nice smokey flavor along with a sort of “bark” on the meat.  I’ll use this technique again.

I took a whole 1 pound chub of 93/7 hamburger and seasoned it with some rub and herbs.  I smoked the chub for about 90 minutes using cherry wood until it reached 165 degrees internal temp.  The chub was wrapped in foil and cooled.

I picked up some nice poblano peppers and another pepper that was called Red Lipstick Pepper.  I diced up three cloves of garlic, the red lipstick pepper and the pieces removed from the poblanos.  These were sauteed along with some onions until tender.

While the peppers and onion were cooking I rough chopped the smoked hamburger chub and ran it through the food processor to get a fine chop on it.  The hamburger was added to the cooked peppers along with some salt, pepper and the “secret” rub.  After mixing for a minute and heating through I added 15 ounces of tomato sauce and 1 cup of cooked rice.

I cut a triangle out of the top of each poblano with a pair of kitchen shears and removed all the seeds and veins.  A layer of pepper jack cheese was added to the inside of each poblano.  The hamburger and rice mixture was then spooned into each pepper.  The poblanos don’t hold all that much so I piled it up high.  I smoked the stuffed peppers for about 30 minutes at 275 degrees in the smoker.

That’s the first try at this new recipe.  More to come…

Green Pork Chili

Ingredients:

• 5 pounds Pork Loin, cut into large chunks
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons Kosher or Sea Salt
• 2 Tablespoons Black Pepper, course grind
• 1 Tablespoon Garlic Salt
• 2 Tablespoons Cumin See, ground
• 2 bunches green onion
• 1 Green Bell Pepper, roasted
• 16 Tomatillos
• 6 Poblanos Peppers, fire roasted
• 15 Anaheim Peppers, fire roasted
• Serrano Chilies, fire roasted (The Serranos control the heat I used 6 of them.  The more heat you want, the more Serrano Chilies you should add)
• 6 cloves Garlic, finely chopped
• 1 bunch Cilantro, stems removed
• 64 oz Chicken Broth

Directions:

If you check out Thirdeye’s recipe you’ll notice this is the first major deviation from his recipe. 

I was planning to use pork butt for this, but when I got to the grocery store I found packages of pork loin chunks on sale and thought they would be perfect for the chili.  They worked great.

I wanted some smoke flavor in my pork so I put the pork chunks on the Traeger using the “Smoke” setting.  This gave me plenty of smoke without much heat.  I didn’t want the pork cooked all that much so this option worked well. 

Use some caution when cold smoking because you want the smoke but don’t want to let the pork get out of the “safe zone” while doing it.

The next step was to grind the pork chunks up.  I used my food processor but you could also use a meat grinder.  When the meat is ground up fry it on the stove and drain any fat.

While the pork is smoking get your gas or charcoal grill hot and roast all your peppers.  I sprayed all the peppers with non-stick cooking spray and just placed them directly on the hot grill grates.  I normally rub each pepper with a little olive oil but with this many peppers it was just easier to lay them all out on sheet pans and spray them.

Put them on the grill and watch them start to char.  You want them to get a nice deep brown.  Remove them just before they turn black.  The next step is to either put them all into a plastic bag or lay them out on the sheet trays and cover them in plastic wrap.

By wrapping them in plastic the peppers will steam and then peels will loosen even more.  After they have cooled remove the stems, peels, seeds and veins.

Puree all the peppers, tomatillos, garlic, onions and cilantro in a food processor.  Now you can see why it’s called green chili!

Combine all ingredients in a large stock pot and cook for a couple of hours.  Just before serving make a slurry with 2 cups of cold water and 1 cup flour.  Use this to thicken the chili.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with cheese and a little dollop of sour cream.

This is an awesome chili.  I’m sure going to make it again, next time I’ll season and smoke the pork a little differently so it has more color and a firmer texture.  I might play around a little with some different green peppers too.

Ingredients:

• 2 baby eggplants
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, mashed
• 1/4 teaspoon Sriracha sauce
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Pre-heat your grill to high.

With a potato peel remove strips of skin off the eggplant.  Slice the eggplant, long ways, into 1/2 inch slices.  Arrange the eggplant slices on sheets of paper towels.

Season the the eggplant slices with a generous amount of salt on both sides.  This will cause the eggplant to release most of the liquid they contain, removing the bitterness of the eggplant while causing it to be less watery during grilling.  Let the salted eggplant set for about 15 minutes, then pat dry with additional paper towels.

In a bowl mix honey, olive oil, garlic Sriracha, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.  Dip both sides of each eggplant slice into mixture.  Oil grilled.  Place eggplant slices on the grill, cover.  Grill for about 3 minutes, rotate 90 degrees and grill for an additional 3 minutes.  Brush  remaining sauce on the slices, flip and repeat process.  Adjust heat through the grilling to insure eggplant is not burning.

Serve immediately.