One of the first events I had the pleasure of participating in was the Char-Broil Celebrity Grill-Off.  The contest featured several local Memphis radio and television personalities who were paired up with one of Char-Broils guest chefs.  The participants were:

• Steve Conley, Host of “Conley & Karen” on Classic Hits 94.1 WKQK
• Jay Young, Host of “The Young and Elder Show” on Kix 106 WGKX
• Earle Augustus, Host of “Love Songs” on Soul Classics 103.5 WRBO
• Ernie Freeman, Anchor of Fox 13’s Good Morning Memphis
• Joey Sulipeck, Chief Meteorologist at Fox 13 Weather Authority

I was teamed up with Jay Young for the cooking contest.  Each team was given about 3 pounds pork loin and two Char-Broil Big Easy Smoker, Roaster & Grill for cook their meat.  The idea was to cut a couple of nice chops from the loin and grill those while smoke roasting the rest of the loin.

The first step was to meet and get our pork plans all laid out.  Jay came prepared with his own secret seasoning mix and it sure had a “kick” to it.

Here Jay and I are prepping the pork.  I’m getting chops ready while Jay gives the loin a little spritz with his pineapple mixture.  Check out the loin stuffed with a Johnsonville Cheddar and Jalapeno Bratwurst.  This technique helps to keep the loin from drying out and provides a nice flavor on the inside of the loin.

One aspect of being a Char-Broil Guest Chef was being able to put aside my deep seeded shyness to do commentary on the various cooking events taking place at the Char-Broil exhibit.

I also had a chance to combine my “serious look” with my best Vanna White imitation.

Checking the temperature of the pork loin with my trusty Red Thermapen.  Everyone knows that the RED Thermapen is the fastest and most accurate of all Thermapens.  In my opinion an instant read thermometer is one of the most important tools an outdoor cooking enthusiast can own.

Took the pork loin out at 145 degrees and let it rest for 10 minutes.  It was perfect.  And check out how great it looks with the brat in the middle.  You can read more about this technique in a previous post I did on the Internally Self-basting Pork Loin.

And last, and certainly best is the picture of Jay Young, Kyshel Tew and myself with the $250.00 check we won for Special Olympics by winning 2nd Place in the grilling contest.

Since putting grill together last week I’ve already done a couple of chicken cooks with the RED unit with good success.  The method of heating on this grill is different than any other gas grill on the market.  (There is a link at the end of this post if you’re interesting in the technical aspects of infrared heat)  This grill gets hot.  And there is a slight curve to learning how to keep the heat within the heat boundaries for proper cooking.

I recently received some “Brat Burgers” from Grilliant Ideas and figured this would be a good time to test the RED on something other than chicken.  The idea of burger patty made out of seasoned sausage meat was something I could immediatly get my mind around.  The first thought I had about cooking these was that the burger must be created pretty much like you would a traditional brat.  With grilled onions and peppers. At least that’s how I’d do it.

So I sliced up an onion and bell pepper, coated the slices with a little olive oil and salt and put them in my grill basket.  I use my grill basket, a lot for veggies on both my smokers and my Weber kettle grills and it was important to me that the onions and pepper still carmelized on the RED grill.

The RED grill I’m using is a three burner version, divided into two cooking zones.  I placed the grill basket over the cooking zone heated by one of the burners.  This allowed me to crank the heat up higher under the onions and peppers than I would want under the corn and brat burgers.

One of the tricks of the RED grills is learning how high you can get the grill under your meat without starting a grease fire.  Using the grill in different zones makes this that much easier by allowing you to cook at different temperatures on the same grill at the same time.  With grilling burgers, corn and carmelizing onions and peppers and wanting them all done at the same time this is a great feature.

Although the onions and peppers carmelized eventually it took them a little longer than I thought they should have.  The RED Grill got plenty hot but what I should have done was pre-heat the grill basket so when the sugars in the onions would have started to carmelize as soon as they hit the hot basket.

By heating up the cast iron grates on the RED I was able to get some really nice grill marks on the brat burgers.  I need a little more practice on timing but you can see with little effort the grill marks were OK.

The “brat burgers” are 1/2 pound patties and cooked faster than I had anticipated.  They are a mixture of beef and pork and although they have the flavor of a brat I’m not sure they have as much “fat” as a normal brat might have.

I don’t know about you but when I grill normal brats I don’t season them so I purposefully didn’t season the “brat burgers.”  Next time I’m going to at least toss a little kosher salt on them.  Even thought they taste great the flavor just didn’t pop.  Again, I don’t think it was the fault of meat, I think it was just my oversight.

As mentioned before one of the really nice features of the RED grill is the control you have over the heat.  I was able to grill the “brat burgers” while directly grilling the corn and cooking the onions/peppers.  Each of the three sections used a different heat level, and it worked great.

One of the interesting features of the RED grill is the “BBQ” setting.  It will allow the user to do some low and slow smoked BBQ on the grill.  I’ve a done a little test and it appears to work pretty good.  In the next week or so I’m going to have give the feature a try on a pork butt or brisket flat.  I’m interested to see if this really works on a long smoke.

The “brat burgers” were quite tasty.  I really enjoyed the flavor and being able to have a brat and eat it on a hamburger bun was a nice treat.   The “brat burgers aren’t available yet, but keeping checking www.grilliantideas.com for when the site goes 100% live and all the products are available.  You can also reach them on Facebook or @Grilliantideas on Twitter.

The meal was great.  A “brat burger” with mustard, a little ketchup and grilled onions and peppers.  A nice early season ear of corn and half a California avocado made for a great meal.

Learn more about Char-Broils Juicy Little Secret.

Aaron Ralston published an “ezine article” with a good explanation for cold smoking:

Cold smoking is very similar to hot smoking, except the cooking temperature is much lower. The targeted cold smoking temperature range is between 80 degrees F  and 100 degrees F, and the smoking time can range anywhere from 4 hours to 4  days. This process relies on smoke to cure the meat or food being smoked instead of using heat. Some people believe that cold smoking occurs at temperatures between 160-190 degrees F, but smoking at this temperature is really a form of hot smoking.

Types of Smoked Foods

A few examples of foods that are usually cold-smoked include bacon, sausage, ham, cheese, and fish. When smoking fish, a preservation salt is needed to pickle the fish before it is smoked. This will help prevent bacteria from groing while the fish is curing in the smoke.

When to Use Cold Smoking

Cold smoking is very difficult, and even impossible in the summer months, because the outside air temperature is normally as hot as or hotter than the temperature needed for true cold smoking. The best time to use cold smoking is during the winter months when the days are typically cooler.

I’ve wanted to give cold smoking a try and when Ian Mckend the owner of Mac’s BBQ, Ltd in England offered to send me a new “cold smoke” generator to try I jumped at the chance.

I’ve had the product for several months but with the temperatures in the Sacramento area over 100 degrees during the summer it’s hard to cold smoke anything when you can’t get your bbq pit below 125 degrees and that’s without a fire in it.  Now that the temperatures have cooled off I decided to give it a try.

I decided to use one of my Weber Smokey Mountain smokers for the cold smoking experiment.  After giving the whole thing a good cleaning I set out to smoke some sausages I recently purchased from Lockeford Meat and Sausage Company in Lockeford, California

There are a variety of smoke generation products on the market today.  But I don’t think there is one that can beat the “ProQ Cold Smoke Generator.”  For pure simplicity and ease of use it would be almost impossible to beat Ian’s new product.   I’m going to have to order some more wood dust to try this out again.  When I smoked my recent bacon experiment it would have been so much easier to have used this to generate the smoke.   I’m no where near an expert in cold smoking but as far as I can tell Ian has come up with another winning product.