• Brown Eyed Baker: Bread and Butter Pickles
• Savor The Senses: Grilled Eggplant & Bok Chou with Korean BBQ Sauce
• Taste With The Eyes: Miso Yaki Onigiri
• Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker: Thai Shrimp With Noodles
• Cuts: Recipes for Every Day: Garlic Parm Pull-Apart Bread
• Scott Roberts: St. Louis Wing Ding
• Jane Deere: Sriracha Thai Chili Powder
• Grilling 24 x 7: Garlic Basil Pork Burgers
• Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice: Pork Tenderloin with Maple Mustard Sauce
• Jason’s BBQ Adventures: Tequila-Lime Shrimp Tacos

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

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.

The sweetness of the sauce on the front of the tongue was so smooth.  I had not tasted a “sweetness” quite like this in a sauce.  The blending of flavors is fantastic.  Big Z uses sorghum syrup for sweetness instead of molasses.  I’ve got to say that I’m now a huge fan of sorghum.

I thought I would try something a little different this time around. ..a pork burger.  I took fresh ground pork and made patties.  And seasoned them with “Bone Suckin’ Sauce Seasoning and Rub.

 After smoking the patties on my Traeger for 90 minutes on the “smoke” setting I fired up the Weber kettle to finish them.  Smoking the pork patties didn’t give me any of that crisp crust you’ve got to have on a burger.

A couple brushes with “Sweet Gold” got the burgers ready for the cheese and buns.

A little more “Sweet Gold” along with all the fixings gave me pork burgers that I could be proud of.

I love all kinds of sauces.  My wife, however, is a little more discerning about her sauces.  So when she said, “This one’s a keeper” I knew Big Z had hit it big with “Sweet Gold.”  I also made some MOINK Balls sauced with “Sweet Gold”.  You can buy “Big Z’s Sweet Gold” at Great Lakes BBQ Supply.

I trimmed almost all the fat cap off.  Since the marbling was so nice on the brisket I didn’t grind any of the fat back in.  If you’ve cooked a brisket before you know that there are two “types” of fat on the brisket.  I guess the best way to describe them is “hard” and “soft.”  If you want a fattier hamburger you need to grind the “softer” fat back into the meat.  Make sure you at least partially freeze the fat before attempting to grind.  Instead  just grinding fat into the meat I ground a pound of apple smoked bacon into the mat.

Here is the hamburger after two grinds.  One course and the other fine.  It’s the nicest looking hamburger I’ve ever seen.

I made up 24 patties.  Twelve were  used tonight and the rest were frozen for later use.

And grilling on the 26 inch Weber One-Touch Kettle was a must.  I sure do love this grill.

The meat was probably a little leaner than I anticipated.  Most people would have thought they were perfectly cooked, but for my taste they were a little to “well done.”  Now that I’ve had a chance to cook one batch I cook the rest for about 2 minutes less on each side.  That should give them a nice pink middle and more juice inside.

We had four other couples from church over for dinner and as you can see at least two of them seemed to be enjoying the burgers.

Nice texture:

Went looking through the refrigerator for something to make a sandwich and found a leftover hard boiled egg. How about a simple egg salad sammie on good old plain “Grandma Sycamore’s White Bread.”

Dug out a couple of ABTs from the freezer. Mixed some Baconnaise with chipotle for a sauce on them:

On the egg salad it rocked. On the ABTs the sauce, even with chipotle mixed in was overpowered by the bacon, cheese and jalapeno.

Tried it on a simple piece of celery. It was really good.

Tried it on a simple Baconnaise Burger:

Some tomatoes, pickles, onions and other stuff:

Got a couple more ideas up my sleeve, but they are going to have to wait for me to be hungry again.