Then there’s the “hot sauce” aspect.  I love food with a little heat.  A “little heat” is a subjective term but I like foods with more heat than the average person.  But I don’t like products with heat, for heat’s sake.  It’s got to have flavor, and I don’t want something so hot it ruins my taste buds for the whole meal.  So, what in the world was I doing to agreeing to review a product called “Devil’s Tongue?”  Chances were I wasn’t going to like it.

I know a lot of hot sauce fans like the burn.  I don’t.  I like to work up a nice forehead sweat and even once in awhile a meal that requires a towel to wipe my whole head is a good thing.  But that’s about it.  When the “Devil’s Tongue” arrived I did what I always do with a new sauce.  I got a spoon out and tasted it.  Normally, this is with BBQ sauce.  Fortunately I had enough common sense to to not eat a whole spoonful.  This stuff is hot.  So hot (at least in my book) that I decided to not even bother trying it on the nice ribeye I had ready for the grill.

After my steak was grilled, rested and about ready for consumption I heard a little voice saying “you’ve got to try me on the steak.  Go ahead…you know you want to.”  Was I being tempted by the “Devil’s Tongue?”  I quickly finished getting my baked potato ready and was anticipating the joy of a perfectly grilled medium rare steak when I realized the temptation was going to work.  I was, in fact, going to give in and eat this stuff on my ribeye.

When you see a steak sauce commercial on television they usually just pour a river of sauce down the middle of the steak and dig in.  That doesn’t happen at the Grail home…no way…no how.  And it certainly wasn’t going to happen with “Devil’s Tongue Steak Sauce.”  The first thing I did was enjoy several bites of steak without any sauce on them.  Regular readers of this blog know I am a huge advocate of just kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper on my steaks.  That’s it!  Nothing fancy, I want to taste the beef.  And just in case this steak sauce screwed up my steak I wanted a couple of good bites to remember it by.

After the first couple of bites I put a little dab of “Devil’s Tongue” steak sauce on my plate and with a fork full of beefy goodness I gently dipped the corner of the steak bite into the sauce.  Just a little, maybe a micro dot, of sauce found it’s way onto the steak.  I could have sworn I heard a voice coming from the bottle of sauce…”Wimp.”  But I’m sure it was just my imagination.  I tried it, I put the bite in my mouth.

It tasted good.  It had the right level of heat for my tastes and the flavor profile of the steak sauce complimented the beef flavor very well.  Now I know the heat level was because I had enough sense to start with just a little and the flavor could have easily overpowered the steak if I had used too much.  But what it comes down to is I actually liked this stuff.  Hot Sauce fans would probably use more, but for me a little dab will do ya.  Over the course of my meal I did slowly increase the amount of sauce on each bite of steak and I eventually reached a level of heat that was not good for me.  But the flavor was always good.

There is one way I do use steak sauce.  A couple times a summer, when I grill tri-tips I baste them with a 50/50 mixture of A-1 Bold and melted butter.  The flavor is awesome with a good Santa Maria seasoning.  I’m thinking a couple tablespoons (0r teaspoons) of “Devil’s Tongue Steak Sauce”  mixed with the butter would make a great basting sauce.  I’m going to have to give it a try.

For those that really like heat and flavor this steak sauce is going to be good for you.  If you’re a little on the wimpy side go slow…use caution.  “Devil’s Tongue Steak Sauce” can be purchased from it’s maker at Ed’s RoadHousE Jerky.

Disclosure:  Ed’s RoadHousE gave me the steak sauce for free.  The fact that I got the sauce for free, had no bearing on whether or not I liked it.  And it certainly didn’t influence my review.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

Really!  If I could think of someone else to lay blame for this meal I would. But I can’t, I have no one else to blame.

As the creator of the “On Our Grill’s – 4 Ingredient Challenge I’m the nut job that comes up with the crazy ingredients my fellow “challenge” participants have to cook each month.  Sometimes when the ingredients are announced they are easy, sometimes they seem hard and actually turn out to be somewhat easy.  This was one of the occasions when the ingredients, rib eye, rutabaga, polenta and frozen strawberries, were announced that I thought I wouldn’t be as difficult as some of the other “challenges.”  Oh, how wrong I was.

The “challenge” is not a contest amongst friendly BBQ bloggers, instead it’s designed to challenge each of us with ingredients that we may not use very often.  I’ve never cooked a rutabaga or polenta so that was my challenge.  Usually the process for coming up with what I’m going to cook is searching the internet for ingredient combinations.  I’m also a big fan of The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity. I use this book a lot to help me match ingredients.

I wanted to combine the rutabaga and the strawberries into a puree.  During my research I came across several interesting combinations of rutabagas and cardamon.  At the same time I found several recipes with strawberries and cardamon.  So, if rutabagas and cardamon go together and strawberries and cardamon go together it stands to reason that rutabagas, strawberries and cardamon would go together.  Right?  WRONG!  Take a look at the picture above, you’ll notice there are no rutabaga or strawberry on the plate.  It’s not necessary to go into great detail here on how I made the Rutabaga/Strawberry Puree.  Suffice it to say that combine Rutabaga, strawberry and cardamon is something that should be outlawed in every kitchen in the entire world.

But wait, there’s more

Take a look at the picture to the right.  Compare it to the picture above.  See a difference?  Yeah, the grilled polenta doesn’t exactly look all the appetizing, does it.  It seems I failed to cook the polenta firm enough.  After chilling the polenta and cutting it, when it hit the grill it just sort of melted into the grill grates.  Grilled mush wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.  It’s such a bummer to plan a menu and then watch your plans for a great meal just sort of melt through the grill grates.  Oh and just in case you were wondering, burning polenta doesn’t smell all that good.

So, in order to have something else to eat instead of perfectly grilled steak I pan seared some additional slices of polenta.  They look pretty good in the picture above.  Certainly a lot better than the picture to the right.  Supposedly you can actually grill polenta but I’m not sure if it will really work.  I’m not sure I like the taste enough to try it again.  But we’ll see what the future holds.

Thank goodness the rib eye came out so incredibly good.  Just a little kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper was all I used to season the steak.  There isn’t a  more flavorful steak than a rib eye so it really doesn’t need anything more than salt and pepper.

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.

Hanneke Eerden of The Dutchess Cooks – ENTRY HERE

After years of cooking, grilling, baking and reading other people’s blogs, I thought “why not start my own blog??” And I did, in 2010, but already after a short period of time, a blog wasn’t enough, and I started my own website. It’s not my goal to publish or come up with fancy and difficult recipes:  just good and delicious food with an international twist! Straight from my plate to yours!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

Cape Fear Salsa recently released a line of BBQ/Grilling seasonings and the steak seasoning is first rate.  It’s a unique combination of herbs and spices that give steak a nice little punch.   The seasoning has the usual garlic and onions but the addition of dill and coriander adds an extra layer of flavor not normally found in a steak seasoning.

What’s really nice about the seasoning is the salt is not over powering and because of the extra flavors you don’t need to be heavy handed when seasoning your steak.  Check out their products at Cape Fear Salsa.

I topped the steaks with a Bleu Cheese Butter that worked quite well with the seasoning.  There are two things I love on a steak.  Butter and Bleu Cheese, combining them into a nice little topper to melt on the steak was just an added bonus.

Bleu Cheese Butter Steak Topper

Ingredients:

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons Bleu Cheese, crumbled and chopped fine
• 1 shallot, chopped as finely as possible.

Directions:

Chop the shallot as fine as you can get it.  In a small skillet melt on tablespoon of the butter.  When butter is melted and hot saute the shallots until tender.  Cool the shallots.

When shallots are cool place them in a small bowl and add the remaining ingredients.  Mix until combined.    Put the butter mixture in the refrigerator and chill until hard.

Place by the teaspoon full on your hot steak and let melt.

At our house baked potatoes or french fries are the standard side dish with steak.  This time we decided something else was in order.  After consulting one of our many BBQ cookbooks we decided on a version of “Roasted Smashed Sweet Potatoes” from Ted Reader’s King of the Q’s Blue Plate BBQ cookbook.

First step was to put a couple of sweet potatoes on the Traeger at 350 degrees.

When the sweet potatoes had been on for about 30 minutes I started a full chimney of charcoal.  Lighter fluid is never allowed on the property so a couple sheets of newspaper with a drizzle of vegetable oil get the chimney started quickly.

I’m convinced it doesn’t take any longer to get charcoal ready using a chimney than it does using the “lighter fluid”  shortcut.

At 350 degrees it took about 50 minutes to get the sweet potatoes done.

Once the sweet potatoes were cooled slightly they were peeled and combined with a little butter, brown sugar and green onion.  We adjusted the recipe a little by adding a topping of brown sugar and ground pecans.

The sweet potatoes with the topping was put back on the Traeger and then moved over the the Weber kettle while the steaks were grilling.

A couple pictures of the sweet potatoes:

Plated up the steaks, green beans and sweet potatoes:

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper were the only seasonings on the steaks.  I made a compound butter of unsalted butter and Todd’s Bayou Dirt.  It added a nice subtle extra kick to the steaks.  And a little on the green beans was fantastic too.

Last night i broke out the Ceramic Pig Grill and grilled up a few of them for dinner.  I have to admit they were mighty tasty.  Was it great…no.  But it was better, much better than I had anticipated for $3.99 per pound.

My Ceramic Pig Grill has developed a crack.

Seasoned the meat with a little Original Wolf Rub. I like my steaks seasoned simply so it doesn't cover up the flavor of the beef.

A couple of minutes on each side and we are almost ready to eat.

Nice, rare and juicy. Just the way I like them.

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.

It’s well over 100 degrees today so we didn’t want to heat up the house with stove and oven so the whole dinner got cooked on the Weber.

A couple of shots of the final product:

And a couple of close-ups.

I’m not sure there is a better BBQ device in the world than the Weber Kettle.

Now that my wife and I are “empty nesters” we are enjoy trying different types of foods and flavor profiles that we couldn’t try with kids at home. We are also trying to eat healthier. Ellie Krieger’s book “The Food You Crave” has given us several great meals that don’t necessarily taste “healthy.”

Tonight we tried her Grill Thai Beef Salad. (You can find the recipe on the Food Network here)

Celeste whipped up the marinade this morning and got flank steak soaking away in what smelled like a fantastic mixture of ginger, soy and garlic chili sauce.

After getting a nice bed of goals on my trusty weber kettle I got to grilling the flank steak:

Check out the close up of the chili sauce and garlic along with other morsels of tasty goodness.

All and all this was a meal that was both satisfying and flavorful. The combination of the basil and cilantro in the salad combined with the chili sauce marinade made of a taste that satisfied my need for a little heat, but wasn’t overpowering.