© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

Jalapenos have a great flavor, they can enhance many different sauces, spices and foods.  But, and it’s a big but sometimes, people come over for dinner and they just can’t stand the heat.  Here’s a tip on how to serve jalapenos without the heat.  This little tip will tame your jalapenos, leaving you with the pepper taste but very little of the heat.  At my house I usually tame half the jalapenos, leaving the other half with the heat for those that love the burn.

To tame jalapenos all you need is jalapenos and some Sprite. I've never tried it with other lemon lime sodas, I was told to use Sprite, and that's what I've always used.

The first step is to remove the seeds and veins from the jalapenos. It doesn't matter if you cut them in half or not. Just remove the seeds and veins.

Put the jalapenos in a bowl and cover them in the Sprite. Put the bowl of japapenos and Sprite in the refrigerator for 24 hours. What you'll end up with are very mild jalapenos and a bowl of very hot Sprite. Don't throw away the Sprite, put it back in the bottle and keep it in the refrigerator. The "kicked up" Sprite makes a great spritz for ribs or other BBQ'd meats.

© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

A chili dog can be one of the simplest, yet rewarding, meals you can prepare.  With just a little extra effort you can turn you normal, run of the mill chili dogs into a true work of art.

Grill some jalapenos

When the jalapenos are good and grilled put them in a plastic bag and sweat them. Remove the skins, seeds and veins.

Get yourself some potato chips

While the peppers are sweating start grilling your sausages.

When the sausages are grilled put them in your buns.

Add some "Big Sid's BBQ Mustard"

Slice and add your grilled jalapenos.

Heat the chili and add it to the sausage.

Add some onions

Some nice mexican blend shredded cheese

Add some sliced Roma tomatoes.

Add your potato chips and you're ready to chow down.

© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

© 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

On my Facebook page I post a “Topic For Discussion” each morning.  A couple of weeks ago the topic was Egg Nog.  The topic turned into a discussion with Laura of Laura’s Best Recipes on how hard it would be to come up with a couple of recipes that used Egg Nog as an ingredient.  Laura has a recipe she’s working on, mine is Egg Nog Chipotle Battered Fried Shrimp with Jalapeno Cranberry Dipping Sauce.

Jalapeno Cranberry Dipping Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 can Cranberry Sauce
• 1 Jalapeno, seeded, deveined and finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons cilantro, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons orange juice

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together and refrigerate for several hours before using so flavors have a chance to mix.

Egg Nog Chipotle Battered Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 12 to 14 ounces Egg Nog
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 egg
• 1+ teaspoon chipotle powder

Directions:

Beat the egg and add to the flour.  Stir in enough Egg Nog to give you a consistency slightly thinner than pancake batter.  When you have the desired consistency add in baking powder and enough chipotle powder to give you the heat you want. The batter is going to pretty sweet and it won’t take much chipotle powder to change the flavor.  What you want is the batter to be sweet on the front of the tongue and give you just a little heat on the back of the tongue on the way down.

The Egg Nog makes a thick batter so don’t be afraid to add some regular milk if needed to give you a thin consistency.

Batter your shrimp and fry them until done.  Serve with the Jalapeno Cranberry Dipping Sauce.

© 2009 – 2010, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

What exactly is “cold smoking?”

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.

© 2009, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

Courtesy Dr. Gonzo's Uncommon Condiments

I love hot dogs and sausages on buns.  It’s the perfect hand held food as far as I’m concerned.  And I love eating my dogs loaded with all kinds of condiments.  Mustard, relish, ketchup, onions, pickles, peppers, hot sauce.  You name it, I love to load it up.  That is until I came across Dr. Gonzo’s Peppermash.

Over the years I’ve eaten lots and lots of different condiments and let me say right here and now that Peppermash is the best I’ve ever eaten.  I know, that’s quite a statement, isn’t it?  But it really is the best.  It’s the only condiment I’ll eat solo on my dogs and sausages.  Just meat, a bun and Peppermash.  Since it’s easy to think something is good when you’re eating it on a quality sausage like Aidell’s Roasted Garlic and Guyere Cheese sausage, I gave it the ultimate test.  I zapped a Ballpark Beef frank in bun in the microwave (the things a guy has to do in the name of food blogging) and ate it with Peppermash and it was so good.  Just for the record BBQ Sauce is not a condiment, it’s a necessity.

Peppermash is Dr. Gonzo’s best seller.  It’s made with a blend of Jalapeno and Cherry peppers.  No fillers or anything else is added.  Just the produce, that’s all.

You won’t regret ordering this amazing product from Dr. Gonzo’s Uncommon Condiments.  And I’m so sure that you’ll like it that I’ll make you this promise.  If you order a jar of Peppermash and you don’t think it’s the best ever, I’ll take it off your hands.  Just package it up and send to me.  How’s that for a guarantee?

© 2009, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

Last week Celeste, my sweet wife, and I were watching “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network.  The episode was on BBQ and one of the hosts was eating at a Chinese restaurant with BBQ Pork Buns.  Celeste and I almost at the same time came up with the idea that we should try it with pulled pork. Celeste is a fantastic baker.  Her breads are so good.  I knew she could come up with a “bun” for me to stuff with pulled pork.

Here’s what we came up with for dinner tonight:

Celeste whipped up some amazing bread dough

Celeste put the dough in a bowl for the first rise before she left for church choir practice. I received the instructions to punch it down with it doubled in size.

I FORGOT!

While Celeste was making the bread dough I unwrapped the pork that was resting.

During the first rise of the bread I pulled the pork. I should have "reseasoned" with some additonal rub. I always do that but for some reason I forgot this time.

Celeste rolled the dough out nice and thin and cut it into different sized circles. We weren't sure how much the dough would rise again or how much pork to put in them, so we made different sizes and shaped.

Celeste starting forming the "pockets" while I took the pictures

Here they are in the oven.

After we took the rolls out of the oven we brushed them lightly with melted butter mixed with Big Z’s sauce. And last, here is the final product all plated up with some Bush’s bean and Celeste’s Chipotle Slaw!

And a fresh jalapeno right out of my garden

© 2009, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.

I love using chipotles in adobo sauce. They provide a nice robust flavor to many different types of dishes, however, because of my families intolerance to “heat,” I don’t get to use them as often as I’d like. And when I do I never use an entire can. For this reason, I’d venture a guess that I have thrown away more chipotles than I have actually ever used. Combined with the effort to de-seed them, it makes me hesitant to use them.

That is until I discovered “The Art of Chipotle Gourmet Paste” by Pfleider Pfoods, Inc. One 6.5 oz jar of paste contains the equivalent of several cans of chipotle in adobo sauce, without the need to drain, de-seed, strain or anything. Just open the lid and spoon out as little or as much as you need. The paste is all natural and contains no preservatives. It’s also gluten-free.

According to the Phleider Pfoods website, they grow their own jalapenos from specially selected seeds and then dry and smoke them with some type of super secret proprietary method. Whatever they use, it provides a dynamic chipotle flavor without some of the bitter aftertaste you sometimes find in canned chipotles.

I discovered “Chipotle Gourmet Paste” when trying a crockpot beef recipe found in a magazine distributed in Raleys grocery stores in Northern California, and since then I’ve used up the whole jar adding it to sauces, dressing, and bbq sauce. Just about everything. Keeping the jar in the refrigerator has provided untold opportunities to try the chipotle flavor profile in different dishes without fear of wasting the rest of the can. It also makes it simple to control the amount of heat you have in your food.

“The Art of Chipotle Gourmet Paste” is available in some grocery stores and online.

© 2008, The BBQ Grail. All rights reserved. On republishing this post you must provide link to original post.