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.

We don’t shop on Sunday so I was limited to what I had in the pantry for the brine.  Thankfully, we always have plenty of Kosher salt and brown sugar.  But what was I going to add to the brine to give it a little POP?  This is what I came up with:

BBQ Grail’s Smokey Pepper Poultry Brine

Ingredients:

• 2 quarts water
• 3/4 cup Morton’s Kosher salt (if you use Diamond Crystal Salt use 1 cup)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons McCormick Sweet & Smokey Pepper Blend
• 1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces

Heat the water and add all the brine ingredients.  Stir until salt and sugar is dissolved.  Cool brine mixture to at least room temperature.  Place brine mixture and chicken in a container.  Make sure all the chicken pieces are submerged.  Brine in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours but not more than 8 hours.

Remove chicken and rinse well.  It’s important to make sure you remove as much of the salt as possible.

Grill on a medium/hot grill until 165 degrees internal.

Rest for five minutes.  Serve.

The McCormick’s Sweet & Smokey Pepper Blend added a great little bite to the brine.  Combine with the brown sugar it gave the chicken a nice flavor.  I got some of the ‘smoke’ flavor I wanted while giving the family the grilled chicken they wanted.

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.

Ingredients:

• 2 Gallons of water
• 2 cups Kosher Salt
• 2 cups Brown Sugar (the darker the better as far as I’m concerned)
• 1/2 cup Tone’s Rosemary Garlic Seasoning

Instructions:

Heat the water in a non-reactive, stainless steel or anodized, pan on the stove.  When water is hot add salt and sugar to the water and stir until desolved.  Once the sugar and salt has disolved and the mixture has cooled to almost room temperature add the Rosemary Garlic Seasoning.  Stir and let the whole mixture cool to at least room temperature.

In another non-reactive container, a zip lock bag works well, cover your chicken, turkey or pork loin in the brine and refrigerate.  Use the guidelines below for how long to brine.

  When the brining is complete make sure you rinse the meat well otherwise the salt taste will be overpowering and your meat will possibly be inedible.

Give it a try.  Thanksgiving is coming up and if you’re cooking your turkey outdoors then brining it is a good idea.

 Brining Times:

• Whole Chicken (4 lbs):  4 to 8 hours
• Whole Turkey:  24 hours
• Whole Pork Loins:  6 to 8 hours

“Bacon! You want to know how good it is? To improve other food they wrap it in bacon.”

Jim Gaffigan makes the statement above during his hilarious stand-up routine about bacon. I know it’s comedy but it’s really true. Isn’t it?

But in today’s health conscious society how do we get the taste of bacon without always having to pay the price with calories and artery hardening. The answer is Bacon Salt. A product that, according to their website is zero calorie, vegetarian, kosher certified, and tastes pretty darn good (that one’s my opinion).

Late last year I made the decision to lose some weight. I didn’t want to diet, I wanted to change how I ate. I’ve lost 30 pounds in the past 6 months and I’ve done it with some sensible changes. But…

I love bacon, it really is my favorite meat. I even cure and smoke my own bacon at home. But I can’t eat it as often as I would like to. So Bacon Salt gives me the chance to enjoy the taste of bacon without the guilt. A sprinkle of Bacon Salt satisfies the bacon taste cravings.

My first order of Bacon Salt was on a lark. I really figured I would just be getting something that resembled ground up bacon bits. I was pleasantly surprised to find a product that tasted as close to bacon as you can get without actually having bacon.

Bacon Salt comes in three flavors, Original, Hickory and Peppered. I love good smoked bbq and I use Hickory for smoking and I was surprised that the Hickory flavored was my least favorite. They’ve captured the taste of Bacon, but not the Hickory. It tastes more live bacon and liquid smoke. The Peppered is really good and adds a nice kick without being too overpowering. The Original is the best. Just salt and bacon! What more do you need?

The Bacon Salt website is a fun read with lots of information about why and how they came up with Bacon Salt. Along with an interesting story about the Maple flavored Bacon Salt that didn’t make it to production.

Some have said that Bacon is the perfect food. If that’s true then Bacon Salt would be the perfect seasoned salt.

Bacon Salt has limited grocery store distribution but can be ordered online. Shipping is quick and you’ll be eating bacon without eating bacon within a week or so.