Hasselback potatoes are said to have originated at Hasselbacken “Hazel Hill” in Stockholm, Sweden.  I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know I love potatoes cooked this way.  For me there isn’t a potato dish that fits cooking on the grill or smoker.  They are so easy to make and look pretty darn impressive.  There are many different recipes for enhancing the flavor of Hasselback potatoes.  I’m not sure if there is an original recipe, but I do know I like this one.

When the guys are J&D’s offered to send me some of their new Bacon Rub I jumped at the chance to give it a try.  My first thought was to grill up some chicken or pork chops with the rub, but as I was preparing my Hasselback potatoes the new Bacon Rub kept calling out for me.  (Meat and meat flavored products often do that)  “Baked” potatoes and bacon just go together.  So that’s how these came about.

With a very sharp nice cut the potato, short side, in slices about 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide.  After doing these for the first time I realized the thinner you can make the slices the better.

There are a couple of good techniques for cutting almost through the potatoes without cutting the bottoms.  The best one I found says to place the potato in a large wooden spoon and then cut through the potato all the way down to the lip of the spoon.  This sounds like a winning way to do it.

I then melted equal parts of olive oil and butter and added a tablespoon of Bacon Rub.  After the mixture cooked for a couple of minutes I poured it over the top of the sliced potatoes.

I cooked the potatoes on my Weber kettle using indirect heat at about 375 degrees for 45 minutes.  Keep the potatoes in your pan or pie plate so you can use the butter/olive oil mixture to baste the potatoes every couple minutes.

They turned out great.  The outside of the potato was nice and crispy while the inside had a nice soft texture.

Next time you’re looking for something a little different for a potato side dish, give Hasselback Potatoes a try.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

If you take a corned beef and smoke it you end up with pastrami.  Now I’m a huge pastrami fan and have done a couple different pastrami posts on the blog before.  This time around I wanted to do something that was a little closer to traditional.  Not all the way, but closer…

One of the only rules with our “challenges” is the protein has to be cooked outdoors using some type of live fire.  Because I wanted to braise the corned beef I figured a dutch oven would be the best way to go.  However, due to it raining at what seemed like biblical proportions I needed to use the “Big Easy/Dutch Oven” combination again.  It worked like a charm.

My 14 inch dutch oven fits perfectly in the top of my Char Broil Big Easy Infrared Smoker, Roaster, and Grill. (Left)  The corned beef in the dutch oven, seasoned with Todd’s  Crabby Dirt, as the braising liquid was added.  I used beef stock, nothing special, just pre-packaged beef stock. (Right)

I braised the corned beef about three hours until it was fork tender.  Because of time constraints I needed to do this cook over two days, so I removed the brisket from the braising liquid, let it cool and then wrapped and put in the refrigerator.

Cooling the corned beef brisket turned out to be the way to go.  Because the beef was so tender it would have been difficult to cut and then grill had I tried to do it while it was fresh from the braising liquid.  Instead I was able to cut it and slice off the fat layer that was still on it.  Worked great…

I grilled up the thick slices of corned beef, both to reheat and to give it just a touch of smoke flavor.  The potatoes were quartered and seasoned and grilled right along with the corned beef.

I plated the corned beef and potatoes and topped it all with a nice cabbage and apple slaw.  The slaw was easy to do.  Just take a quarter head of green cabbage.  Cut it into large chunks and cook in boiling water for four minutes.  Remove the blanched cabbage from the boiling water and immediately shock with ice cold water, to stop the cooking.  Drain and dry the cabbage.  Add a half a julienned Granny Smith Apple, the juice from one lemon and some crushed red pepper.  SERVE IMMEDIATELY.  If you let this slaw sit for to long the red pepper will combine with the lemon juice and apple and give you a slightly bitter taste.  If you serve it immediately you won’t have this problem.

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.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

I use this tip most often when getting ready to smoked cured meats.  When smoking corned beef for pastrami or cured pork shoulders for Buckboard Bacon it’s important to remove as much of the curing salts from the meat before smoking.  If you don’t do this your finished meat will be too salty to eat.

Normally, you will soak the cured meats for a couple of hours in cold water.  Even though you might change the water every thirty minutes sometimes you can’t remove enough salt.  When you add a large diced or chunked potato to the water you can remove even more salt.

This tip not only works for removing curing salts but you can use it to remove excess salt from sauces, stews and soups should you add to much salt by mistake.

A few months ago I used my charcoal chimney and a small cooking grate to grill some sausages.  Cooking directly on the chimney worked perfectly and I’ve used it a couple of more times to grill small amounts of meat.

The thought came to me that I could use the charcoal chimney to heat the cast iron skillet and fry my catfish.  I lit half a chimney of Kingsford charcoal and let it ash over.  I knew the charcoal would get the cast iron skillet hot, but I wasn’t sure how long it would burn so added five or six unlit briquettes to the already hot charcoal.

This worked well but the one thing I would do differently next time is find something to raise the chimney up off the flat surface it was one.  This will allow more airflow and keep the temperature steady through out the whole fish fry.

Preheating the cast iron skillet.

While the skillet was preheating I breaded the catfish in a little corn meal seasoned with a great seasoned salt I purchased at Granville Market in Vancouver, Canada called “Smoked Garlic Chipotle Salt” from Oddball Organics.

When I was growing up my mom used to fry fish breaded with corn meal and even now after many, many years of eating fish breaded with different methods corn meal is still my favorite way of doing it.

Once the cast iron skillet was heated and the oil up to temperature I was ready to fry some catfish.  It was no problem getting the oil heated to over 350 degrees.  The only real problem with cooking this way is there isn’t any way to control the temp.  There is no higher or lower.  You’ve just got to hope you get the right amount of briquettes.  Trial and error is the best way to learn this method.

The catfish fried without a hitch.

A big baked potato, tartar sauce and corn makes for a great Friday evening meal.  Clean up is simple and I didn’t have to worry about lighting candles or opening windows to air the house out.

As I wondered through the Fancy Food Store I was immediately stopped in my tracks at the Ginger People booth.  They had a fountain of sweet chili sauce flowing.  They had taken one of those ever popular wedding reception appliances and filled it full of sweet chili sauce instead of chocolate.  Anyone with that much love of their product deserved my attention.

A cube of chicken on a toothpick dipped into the fountain immediately told my tongue that this was not just any normal sweet chili sauce.  The Ginger People are serious  about their ginger and it shows in the Sweet Ginger Chili Sauce.  It’s loaded with ginger.  You can see the  floating in this stuff.  And you know what it tastes fantastic.  I’ve never been a huge fan of ginger.  Not because I don’t like ginger, but because other than putting ground ginger in teriyaki sauce or eating a few thin slices  when I eat sushi I had not used it all that much.

(See the end of this post for some details on the history of ginger.)

Tonight I decided to give my sample of Ginger Sweet Chili Sauce a try on some grilled fresh salmon.  Because I wanted to be able to taste how the ginger and chili worked with the salmon I only used sea salt and fresh ground pepper on it.

I used my Weber 26 inch kettle to grill the salmon and some asparagus.

After 7 minutes on each side I glazed the salmon with a healthy dose of the Sweet Ginger Chili Sauce and let it set for a few minutes.  Toss in a small baked potato and you’ve got yourself a great meal.

The glaze was great with the salmon.  The balance between sweet and hot was even handed and neither overpowered the mildness of the fish.  Best of all the sweetness hit the front of the tongue immediately with a little bit of hit on the back of the throat on the way down.

Next up for the Sweet Ginger Chili Sauce will be a spatchcocked chicken.  It’s going to be great, I already know that.

Ginger is native to India and China. It takes its name from the Sanskrit word stringa-vera, which means “with a body like a horn”, as in antlers. Ginger has been important in Chinese medicine for many centuries, and is mentioned in the writings of Confucius. It is also named in the Koran, the sacred book of the Moslems, indicating it was known in Arab countries as far back as 650 A.D. It was one of the earliest spice known in Western Europe, used since the ninth century. It became so popular in Europe that it was included in every table setting, like salt and pepper. A common article of medieval and Renaissance trade, it was one of the spices used against the plague. In English pubs and taverns in the nineteenth century, barkeepers put out small containers of ground ginger, for people to sprinkle into their beer — the origin of ginger ale. In order to ’gee up’ a lazy horse, it is the time honoured practice of Sussex farmers to apply a pinch of ginger to the animal’s backside. (Courtesy of The Encyclopedia of Spices)

Ginger is a tuber and a member of the Zingiberaceae family.  Other members of the this plant family are turmeric and cardamon.

Courtesy Cowgirl's Country

One of the great things about the BBQ community is the willingness to share ideas.  I came across this great post on one of my fellow BBQ Brethren’s blog.

Enjoy Cowgirl’s Smoked Baked Steak.