The trick is to smoke the meat and not make the meat smoke
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2009 Blog Archive

Here is the ARCHIVE OF BLOGS for this year with links to all of the entries listed chronologically.
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An Almost Big Mistake

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I’ve been having charcoal availability woes this Winter and it could have affected my smoke yesterday if not for a happy accident. I am going to briefly explain what happened in the hopes it may help someone else not make the same silly mistake I almost made. I detailed some of the charcoal availability woes I’ve been having in yesterdays blog entry Kingsford Competition Briquettes. Let me cut to the chase hear. My Christmas cook left me with 1/2 of a small 4.5 pound (2 Kg) bag of blue bag Kingsford. About enough to fill my charcoal chimney. On Monday I was able to find 4 more 4.5 pound (2 Kg) bags of blue bag Kingsford. My 5 hour cook used 1 1/2 of these 4.5 bags (2 Kg), so I ASSumed the 4 bags would be more than enough for a cook that took me 8 hours last summer. Turns out I shouldn’t have stopped looking. I made 3 basic mistakes here which I shall explain below. Read More...
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Kingsford Competition Briquettes

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As I write this I am test driving a new Kingsford charcoal that may have solved all of my problems with availability. The end of the year was looking grim. Not only had I given up all hope of finding my favorite charcoal: DuraFlame All Natural Hardwood Briquettes, I was having trouble scrounging up 4 bags of standard blue bag Kingsford briquettes. I spent the better part of a morning looking around and came home empty handed. Then while on a trip to Home Depot for something completely different I stumbled upon a new Kingsford Charcoal. It is called Kingsford Competition Briquettes and to my total shock the bag said 100% All Natural. I just about had to pinch myself. Once I had tried the DuraFlame 100% natural briquettes I never wanted to use the blue bag “New Kingsford” again. Problem is DuraFlame charcoal just never caught on around here. The DuraFlame logs are everywhere, but know one seems to have heard of the charcoal briquettes they make. I used to buy 20-30 bags at one time and try to stock up for the Winter, but this year I could find any. For Thanksgiving I had reluctantly switched to blue bag Kingsford out of necessity. I couldn't even find that around Christmas time and I used up all of my supply cooking my Christmas prime rib. three days before New Years I had managed to score the only four bags at my local market which had me covered (barely) for my New Years Eve smoked pork. In case you noticed the blog is dated December 30, this roast is smoked the day before and refrigerated overnight. Then it is finished in the oven the next day. Read More...
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Looking Back, Looking Ahead ‘09

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For the last 3 years I’ve ended the year with a blog containing several Top 5 barbecue related lists. Top 5 Cooks, Top 5 Things I’ve Learned, The Top 5 Mistakes Made, and my list of Top 5 Goals for the New Year. I’ve made a change to the format for this year. As I detailed in my blog entry Banner Year, I was lucky enough to have made some of the best meals I’ve ever eaten this year. Since these items were also some of my favorite foods ever, they would automatically have to be listed as the Top 5 cooks this year. There were a lot of other great meals I made that deserved so acknowledgment. So I am adding a category for “Top 5 New Items Cooked in 2009” for recipes using new foods or new techniques that turned out great.
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Banner Year

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Since I have been writing this blog, I’ve been doing a Year-In-Review entry at the end of December where I do a Top Five type list. While I still plan to do this, when I began reviewing the past year in my mind I realized it was a truly exceptional year in many ways. A Top Five list with a picture and a brief description just wouldn’t do this year justice. This blog entry will attempt to describe what has been my best year ever Grilling & Smoking. I‘ve already covered some of the specifics in an earlier blog entry from this year entitled OFF TO A GREAT START. The blog entry below will be more of a big picture entry in terms of the causes and will describe 5 meals that turned out to be some of the best meals I’ve ever had. Read More...
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Beach & BBQ Festival

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This blog describes the second BBQ event I attended this summer which occurred two weeks after CHEF’S IN SHORTS. It was called the Phantom Gourmet BBQ Beach Party and it was held on Saturday June 27th. Actually it was a 3 day event, we chose to go on Saturday. The venue was the grounds of the Wonderland horse racing track in Revere, MA. While Wonderland is somewhat near the ocean in Revere, the beach part came from some beach sand that was trucked in to be used as part of some special events. For those of you who aren’t from New England the Phantom Gourmet is a the name of a mystery diner who goes to various restaurants posing as a regular guest, so as not to get special treatment. The results of these incognito visits have had various outlets: a weekly TV show, a newspaper column in the Boston Herald, as well as radio & TV reports. Read More...
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Chefs in Shorts

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While getting ready to write my Looking Back, Looking Ahead Blog Entry for this year I realized two of the highlights of the year were BBQ related events I didn’t write about at the time. This blog and one other will correct that oversight. This blog is about Chef’s in Shorts, a charity event where chef’s from nearly 40 Boston area restaurants gather to cook food outdoors on grills and some smokers. Many of the chef’s also wore shorts, but this rule wasn’t strictly enforced and long pants wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in some cases. The event this year was on June 12th and ran from 7:00-9:30PM at Boston’n World Trade Center in the Seaport District. The proceeds from the $60 tickets went to the Boston area Food Bank. Your ticket buys you all the food you can eat and several vouchers for the adult beverages of your choice. Read More...
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Old Lessons, New Benefits

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Yesterday, during our first significant snow storm of the year, I made a meal for my parents, that could have gone seriously off track. I am happy to say it didn’t go of track and the reason was because of some lessons learned in practice cooks when little was at stake. This blog will describe a relatively simple thing that could have gone badly wrong and why it didn’t. Read More...
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iPhone BBQ Buddy - Fromage

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For those of you who don’t know: Fromage is the French word for cheese. This handy iPhone app gives you a reference source for 650 cheese right on your iPhone. The app references information from several cheese based websites, but the information is stored locally so you don’t have to have an internet connection to use this app. While I generally really like this app and use it often, it is not perfect. It has improved with each release and I expect it will continue to improve. I think it is well worth the $2.99 price tag. One of the things I like about most iPhone apps is their relatively low cost. I find I am often willing to spend a couple bucks to try out an app and if it doesn’t work out for me, it is not a big deal. Read More...
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In Search of Turkey Perfection

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This blog entry is about my recent realization that despite being lucky enough to turn out the best turkey I’ve ever had right in my own back yard, I wanted more. I wasn’t sure where I was going with this desire for more. I’d gotten the basics of the recipe I was using down to where it is second nature. Any new recipe I might try I’d certainly want to test drive on some non-holiday weekend. I didn’t want to make a step backwards and have a holiday meal be infamous in family circles for a cooking disaster. So what could I do to improve this recipe? It turned out several things as this blog will detail. But let’s begin at the beginning. Read More...
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iPhone BBQ Buddy - Grill Guide

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I’m continuing to do blog entries on some handy cooking related apps I have on my iPhone. This time I’ll describe Grill Guide by Dadoo which is a pocket reference guide to grilling which costs an outrageous $0.99. Yes all of this info is available in various cookbooks, but think about it for a minute. You are going to have your cell phone with you wherever you go. How often do you have a cookbook along for the ride? Read More...
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High Tech Thermo

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Let’s get the confession out of the way first: I am a gadget freak, I like gadgets. Not just any gadget, it has to have some practical value. This blog entry is about the latest instant read thermometer I just picked up. It is a dual mode thermometer that measures not only the internal temperature but also uses infrared readings and a targeting laser to measure the surface temperature of an object. This opens up some interesting possibilities that may improve my end results.

Since writing this blog I have discovered this unit did not have very good longevity nor did it have a warrantee. I describe the problems in 1 2014 blog entry FAIL & QUALIFIED SUCCESS
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New Que Calendar Section

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’ve added a new section to the site for the calendars I’ve been doing with my best food photos for that particular year. I used to post the photos from that years calendar as a blog entry. A friend from work who had seen the real calendars said that I shouldn’t use a blog to show these pictures. He said use a page like I do for my food pictures because the pictures are bigger. In thinking about it I’ve decided he was right. The blog limits the size of the pictures to 300 pixels maximum, a picture page can have much bigger picture sizes. Since these calendar pictures are a collage of smaller pictures it made sense to go big.

The calendars are a feature of Apple’s iPhoto photo management software. You create the calendars using an Apple supplied template and your pictures. You can upload it to Apple and get it professionally printed and bound. These que cals with my food pictures from the previous year have proven popular. The first year I printed one for me. Four years later I am up to six. I have had people who aren’t relatives ask for a copy which surprised me.

Starting today there is a new section of photos from my Que Calendar’s. Initially it will be the calendars from 2009 and 2010. I will go back through my archives to see if I have the other years Calendars from 2007 & 2008. If so I will eventually add those as well.

In a last bit of news I have been rather busy from mid August up until now and continuing through the end of the year. As a result I’ve had less free time. What this has meant is: I would rather spend that reduced time cooking rather than writing about cooking. So while I have squeezed some cooks in and have posted the pictures here, I haven’t been writing blog entries. This trend will probably continue for the rest of this year.
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NEW CALENDAR SECTION

  QUE CALENDARS


  BACK TO BBQ BLOG 2009
  ARCHIVE OF BLOGS: 2009
  INDEX OF BLOGS: ALL YEARS
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Up in Flames

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Grilling is all about using fire to cook your food, the key here is in a controlled manner. These past two weeks I’ve had two experiences where the fire has gotten out of control and I figured it is worth a blog entry. Now the first thing I’ll say is neither event killed the meal, but it could have and I was lucky. I want to learn from my mistakes and figured it might help others. For one occurrence I know exactly what happened, while with the other I have several theories and plan to make the meal again to test them out. Another thing I will mention is there aren’t going to be any photos of the pyrotechnics. The only reason I got the photo above is that the initial flare-up occurred just as I was getting ready to snap a picture of the burgers on the grill. After that in both cases all of my efforts were devoted to keeping the flames under control. Read More...
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iPhone BBQ Buddy - Groceries

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Next in my serious of blogs about cooking related iPhone apps is Groceries, a shopping list app from Sophiestication software available at the iTunes Store. After some initial setup, it makes creating shopping lists quick and easy. It comes loaded with pre-made entries for many types of groceries and is highly customizable. One of the things I like is you can customize the shopping lists on a store by store basis to reflect the actual aisle layout and aisle content of each store you make a list for. Read More...
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iPhone BBQ Buddy-Locavore

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A locavore is someone who tries to eat locally grown food. This blog will cover a cool iPhone app that helps you tell which food is in season and help you go out and find it. As I mentioned in my last blog entry (IPHONE BBQ BUDDY-COOKING HOME SCREEN) I recently assembly a small array of apps on my iPhone. Where many folks I know that grill also own iPhones, I figured I might share some of these cooking related apps. This particular app is called Locavore and it is by Buster McLeod. Locavore does several things as represented by 4 icons at the bottom of the main screen: It tells you what is in season locally and for how much longer (In-Season Button), it tells you where to go get those fresh fruits and vegetables (Markets Button), it tells you what areas of the country the produce is in season (Browse Button) and lastly it provides links to recipes using the particular fruit or veggie you are interested in. It also has some social networking application features (I Ate Local) with links to Facebook and personal reviews. This last feature is not at all my cup of tea and I don’t use it, so I won’t be covering it here. This app takes advantage of the Location Services built into the iPhone, so it always knows where you are and presents it’s info based on your current location.
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iPhone BBQ Buddy-Cooking Home Screen

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The era of applications for the iPhone, which began about a year ago has resulted in 60,000 apps. The other day I created a home page on the my iPhone that contained apps and links related to my grilling. Since most of my own grilling friends also seem to own iPhones I figured I’d share some of these apps that have helped me out. Now with 60,000 apps there are many categories that may have multiple versions of these apps. I tried to pick the ones that will worked best for me. One of the beauties of these apps is they are sometimes free, often $0.99 and usually less than $5.00. At that price you can afford to test drive several to see which ones are the best fit. I am going to do a series of blogs talking about several of these apps that I use. You may find you like the concept, but may find that another app suits your needs better. This first entry will talk about how to organize these apps & web links into a home screen that is your one stop location for all things cooking on your iPhone. Read More...
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Off to a Great Start

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I realized recently that I am having a really, truly incredible year pursuing my grilling & smoking hobby. Since then I’ve been thinking about the reasons for this great year. I think I have come up with some of the reasons why, which I shall share in this blog entry. I wanted to understand why so I could try to keep it up. I also figured I’d share my findings and perhaps some of the things that have helped me, will serve to help others up their game too. First some background though. Read More...
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The Best Pork Roast Ever

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On Tuesday I had one of the most amazing meals I have ever had the pleasure of eating and the way it came about was a total fluke. This blog will describe the strange set of circumstances leading up to this meal and even better for you will find the links to the roast pork recipe at the end of this blog. If you are reading this while the 2009 season of the PBS show Cook’s Country is airing you can access the recipe for free. After watching the recipe being cooked, I realized it would be a perfect candidate for the smoker. To paraphrase Stephen Raichlen: If something is good in the oven it is even better grilled or better yet smoked, and I certainly won’t argue with that point. Read More...
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What Goes Around Comes Around

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The device I am going to talk about in this blog entry is a Food Mill which turns round and round and is a throwback to an earlier time - hence the bad pun of my title. So why am I writing about a Food Mill? Well I just used one to turn out the best mashed potatoes I have ever tasted. Now granted mashed potatoes aren’t grilled or smoked, but this is my website so I can write whatever I’d like. Plus I plan to use this to grind tomatoes and other veggies to make some more grilled soups. The reality is if you are reading this blog you are probably into food of all kinds. So let me tell you a little bit about the food mill and how I discovered it. At the end of this blog will be a link for the video that helped me make the best mashed potatoes the four people who tried them have ever eaten. Read More...
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Raising the Bar

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This year has been interesting as I’ve had a couple of my goals for the year combine to create a synergy where one goal has helped me to achieve another. It has been about 6 years since I got more serious about grilling and it became a hobby as opposed to dabbling on weekends in the warm weather. At this point while it would be easy to settle in and be happy with what I have learned thus far on the grill or smoker, I have continued to set new goals for myself. This year was no exception. I’ve wanted to do more multi-item cooks. I also wanted learn more about grilled veggies. Well I hadn’t given it much thought but veggies are side dishes so grilling veggies is an easy way to learn about multi item cooks. One of my other goals was to continue to grow and try new things. Well grilled veggies were certainly a new thing for me, but it goes farther than this. For a while now without my knowing exactly why I have been in a mindset where I am constantly in search of new recipes to try. In fact I am almost disappointed when for one reason or another I have to revisit an old favorite. Before I let this drift of too far let me say this blog will be about some of the lessons I have learned grilling veggies and preparing more meals where the main course wasn’t the only item coming off the grill. It will be short on pictures, but hopefully long on useful information. Read More...
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Staying in Grate Shape

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Recently I was having a discussion with a long time griller Ferenc who really wasn’t sure what the best way was to keep his grill grates in great shape. So this blog entry will repeat some of the advice I gave out. Read More...
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Soup’s On

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Stephen Raichlen has a saying to the effect that if something is good cooked one way, it is even better on the grill. I have long believed this, but thought there were food types that fell outside this rule. Soup for example. While I love a good soup or stew, I never dreamed of taking it outdoors and preparing it on the grill. Recently I have been trying to focus on some new foods or methods and they have all come together in soups. I wanted to focus more on grilling vegetables, plus I wanted to learn more about making multiple items on the grill. These two items turn out to be complementary. Veggies are a side dish, so when you are making veggies on the grill you can also make the main course as well. Soups while they can be the main course are often a starter course and they usually have a lot of veggies in them. Soups have a big advantage in that you can get them started and let them simmer while you are preparing the main course. Read More...
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Really Simple Sorry

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If you don’t use RSS to follow my musings via this blog you can stop reading. I have a handful of BBQing friends or family that follow this blog by the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. They get a notice when I add a page or make a change to one of these pages. Today I had to make a formatting change that affected all of my 2009 pages. Last time I did this depending on the RSS reader people used they got notified either that all of the pages had changed or I’d added a new page. They’d visit the site only to find nothing changed. Then I’d get an email asking what was up, why couldn’t they find anything, was their RSS reader broken? etc. So this blog entry is an explanation and an apology. Nothing has changed the newest entry is yesterday’s entry: ANOTHER NEAT GADGET.

If you weren’t one of the ones affected and are still reading this at this point I say: Why? Actually to be serious if you enjoy reading my blog and want to get notified when there is a new entry, go back to the main 2009 BBQ blog page and click on the RSS button at the top of the page.
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Another Neat Gadget

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I have been on a real grilling tear lately and in particular I’ve been focussing on grilling more veggies. I picked up a neat gadget called a flexible grill basket from the Sur La Table store that is going to help in that cause. It has several features which make it unique from the other grill baskets I already own. So this blog entry will talk about my first impressions of this grill basket. Read More...
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It was Kismet

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I had a strange coincidence happen this past week that I just had to write about. Now technically it is not about grilling and smoking. But it involved a side dish to grilled pizza and it is my blog so I can write anything I want when it comes right down to it. What exactly is it I am talking about: Home made breadsticks. Read More...
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Night School

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Last Monday evening I drove up to Vermont and took a refresher course at King Arthur Flour called Bread 101. This entry will talk a little about the class itself, and why you should really take a class if you are going to try to bake your own breads and rolls. It really is not that hard. Your reward is you can serve your grilled or smoked food with or on some bread or rolls that are better than what you can buy at most stores. Read More...
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Things Really Panned Out

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This past weekend I picked up some new grilling pans that should make grilling easier and open up new paths for me. I couldn’t even wait a day before putting one to use. One of my goals has been to start doing multiple items on the grill and I have been headed in that direction for the last year. I’ve also stated this summer that I want to get into grilled veggies in a big way. A mailing I received from Williams-Sonoma has resulted in the purchase of two new tools that I am really looking forward to using. The mailing I received featured a stainless steel mesh roasting pan and showed a picture of a pork roast surrounded by a sea of grilled veggies. Just the thing to solve the multiple items/more grilled veggies wishes. I already own a pan from this line that looks a bit like a mesh wok although it is described as a grill-top frying pan. It is very well constructed, dishwasher safe and should last a lifetime. I hadn’t gotten around to using it yet, but planned to real soon. Knowing how well this item was built had me ready to buy the roast pan before I even spent any hands on time with it in the store. Read More...
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Pizza Perfection

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This past week has been a real busy one for me at the grill and to a lesser extent at the oven. This blog and the next several will cover some cool tools and new books that seem to be improving what I make. This entry will talk about some steps forward I’ve made with my grilled pizzas. You can tell I’ve busy as I have been wanting to write this entry for nearly a week. But busy cooking things is a good kind of busy to be, so no complaints from me. Read More...
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New Direction, Big Improvements

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In the past week I have made a commitment to a new aspect of my hobby. I have decided to get much deeper into baking my own breads. It has made a huge improvement in the quality and taste of what I make and while it has its challenges, with a little help you too can do it. Now this isn’t about baking desserts, I am specifically learning to make baked goods to accompany my grilled food. In the past year I started making my own hamburger and hot dog rolls. Even with my tiny knowledge base and beginner’s abilities, they were better than most any rolls I have tried. This got me thinking about doing other types of bread, such as deli type breads, kaiser rolls, sub rolls etc. Now the reason I mentioned commitment is I have just invested some money in adding some new gear to my arsenal and have signed up for more classes. I will discuss some of the equipment you will need, but actually you can get up and running with very little initial investment. The other thing you should do is take a few classes, either formal or under the watchful eye of someone you know who bakes. Read More...
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Grilled Pizza Friday

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Now that I am able to bake my own hamburger rolls and hotdog buns, the next item I wanted to do from scratch was pizza dough for grilled pizza. My Father-In-Law had a computer related task he wanted help with. When he offered to bring the laptop up and while the software was being installed he would show me how to make my own pizza dough I jumped at the chance. When I first got my latest gas grill he had given me a lesson, but where I hadn’t baked anything prior to that most of it was a bit over my head. This time around the general process wasn’t a big mystery to me, I just needed some help with the specifics. I was eagerly looking forward to this day. Where this is a BBQ blog and not a baking blog I will gloss over the baking aspects a bit and highlight what I have learned about grilled pizza. I’ve made grilled pizza on other occasions using store bought pre-made crusts, so making my own dough was the last missing piece of the puzzle. If you want to skip straight to the grilled pizza part, go to the 4th paragraph. Read More...
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World Class Grilling

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Recently I have been making more and more recipes from around the world. The end result is I have been having more fun than ever and experiencing some great new flavors. I’m going to use this blog entry to describe my experiences and encourage people to do the same. Now I realize I may be quite late to this party, but you’ve got to understand what growing growing up in New England was like. Forty years ago the cuisine around here was pretty provincial, rigid and bland. There were all of these unwritten rules. Fridays was fish, Saturday lunch was hamburgers or maybe steak in the summer. Saturday night was franks and beans. Sunday was a New England boiled dinner either corned beef or pot roast. Monday was Sunday left overs. Wednesday was spaghetti. It wasn’t until I went to college in the Midwest that I started to find new types of cuisine. They had lots of restaurants serving food I’d never heard of. Much of this has made it’s way to New England, but it was a long time coming. Read More...
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Weber’s Way to Grill

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Weber’s Big Book of Grilling is one of my top three grill cookbooks along with HOW TO GRILL and MASTERING THE GRILL. Jamie Purviance who writes Weber’s grilling cookbooks has topped himself with his latest effort Weber’s Way to Grill. I find it hard to believe I am saying this, since Big Book of Grilling is SO good. Way to Grill combines the two things I like best about the other two: It has over 1,000 how to pictures like How to Grill and has the emphasis of science along with art of cooking like MASTERING THE GRILL. On top of that are great recipes which manage to improve on those of Big Book of Grilling. The recipes are still relatively simple, but hardly ordinary. But this time around there is more of an international flavor and they use somewhat more advanced techniques, which are illustrated in the how to photos. Read More...
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You Light Up My Life

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I was talking to someone about grilling the other day and was surprised to find out that not only did they not use a charcoal chimney, they didn’t even know what it was or did. That conversation was the inspiration for this blog entry. If you use a charcoal grill and don’t use a charcoal chimney, you owe it to yourself to check them out. They make lighting charcoal easy, fast and predictable. The predictable part is nice as you know exactly how much time it takes to get the coals started, similar to firing up a gas grill. You will quickly learn the time to allow to light the chimney based on the brand charcoal and amount of charcoal you use. For me a half chimney with DuraFlame is 12 minutes in warm weather and about 18 in the cold. So I go out to light the chimney 15 minutes ahead of time in the summer and 20 minutes before in the winter. Read More...
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Catch Up

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Often in the past when I’ve neglected my blog it has been because work has taken me away from my hobby. This past month has been the opposite “problem”: In the past month I have used the grill or smoker 19 times to make a total of 16 items. So I haven’t been writing about grilling & smoking because I have been too busy grilling and smoking. This entry will sum up the last month or so in general terms. Read More...
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Weather Independence

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The other day I had one of those “ah-ha” moments and it was a great feeling that I’d like to share with you. This is the year I discovered my gas grill can be used in much colder weather than I ever imagined. There used to be 2 grilling seasons around here: April through October where I would use the gas grill for direct, indirect and rotisserie grilling. Then November through March where I would only do large roasts via indirect grilling and use the rotisserie. The smoker wold be used year round, the only concession I would make to the weather is I’d use recipes that didn’t involve lifting the lid as much. But what would happen is Spring would arrive and I’d be grilling lots of hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks etc. because I had been deprived all winter. I would also back off on the roasts because they had been my winter fare. So what is it I realized this week that made me feel so great? Simply that I have become somewhat weather independent, and that means great things. Read More...
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Succeeding Despite My Best Efforts to Fail

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This is a tale of success despite my ignoring what turned out to be good advice. I really didn’t deserve to succeed. But after almost snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I managed to turn things around. I won’t take all of the blame here though. I really think something wasn’t right with the directions or ingredients in the recipe. Read More...
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Wood Chip Soaker

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This blog entry talks about a specialized tool that you could live without, but you may not want to. The tool is the Steven Raichlen Best of Barbecue Wood Chip Soaker. For years I used other solutions to soaking my wood chips but this device is an elegant solution that offers several advantages to anything I had come up with. Read More...
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Get a Good Grip

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This year I seem to be writing about tri-tip or cool tools. This entry is about the lowly BBQ tongs. Until I tried these Steven Raicheln Best of BBQ tongs I really hadn’t give tongs much though. Turns out a good pair of tongs elevates your experience using them to a whole new level. Actually I said having a good pair of tongs and it should have read two good pair of tongs. I always like to have two pair. That way there if one is in the dishwasher the other is available for use. Also if you have a big piece of meat or a fragile one it is often better to have two pair to use. There are several other tongs out there that look like mine, I will describe hear what makes a good pair of tongs. Read More...
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Tri-Tip Trifecta

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This third blog entry on tri-tip focusses on some new things I have learned. When I was looking up tri-tip recipes I found two recipes in Weber’s Big Book of Grilling that looked equally interesting. The ROSEMARY TRI-TIP I made last Saturday won by a nose, but I really couldn’t wait to try the other recipe: SANTA MARIA TRI-TIP. It turned out I was going to be home all day Sunday and the temperatures were going to be in the 50’s in January. I figured it was a sign and I was off to the butchers. Since the tri-tip I get is frozen in cryovac, I decided to buy 3 to have plenty around. Read More...
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Tri-Tip Try Again

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Last Monday I made a tri-tip for the first time, as detailed in the blog entry MORE WISH FULFILLMENT. My second attempt at a tri-tip was about as good as it gets. That was due to 3 or possibly 4 simple improvements, which I will discuss in this brief blog entry. There are no new pictures this time around as I was too busy cooking two tri-tips and monitoring the temperatures more closely. Read More...
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Remote Possibility

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When I got my current gas grill and got started down the path of grilling year round in all kinds of weather, one of the best purchases I ever made was a dual probe remote read meat thermometer. I am still surprised to this day that more people don’t use them. At around $50 they are not cheap, but I would consider them an essential piece of equipment I wouldn’t want to be without. They can help keep you warm and dry during cold, wet weather . Another bonus is they can shorten your cooking time because you do not have to keep lifting the lid and loosing your heat to take in flight temperature readings. I find they make keeping those all important cooking logs easier too. Since you don’t have to keep running in and out all the time to check the temps you are more likely to take readings and take them more often. Read More...
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More Wish Fulfillment

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Tri - tip in New England: Who’d a thunk it? I’ve been on a roll lately, and I don’t just mean the fresh hamburger and hot dog rolls I’ve been making. First as I’ve described in several recent blogs: I’ve discovered that I can direct grill with my current gas grill all winter long. Additionally I have realized a couple fantasies such as hotdogs and hamburgers served on fresh baked homemade rolls. Another item I’d always wanted to eat was beef tri - tip. Read More...
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Under Construction

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January 26, 2009 marks the third anniversary of this site chronicling my adventures in Grillin’ & Smokin’. I was not planning on doing anything in particular to mark this occasion. Coincidentally when I started looking at the new iWeb ’09 from Apple I saw a web site template I really liked. It was intended for sites with lots of photos like this site. The new template was clean and modern looking and I decided refreshing the look of the site would be a good way to mark the third anniversary of the site. This was not change for the sake of change I think if you look at the two screen capture below, you will agree the new template makes the photos stand out more and the page itself becomes more neutral. A bonus is the site loads faster too.

I’ve got the site about half switched over at this point and hope to get the rest of it done in the next couple weeks. In the mean time you may notice a few flukey links on the new style pages. Some of the pages you browse will still be using the old template style during the transition, but they should work just fine.

“Second . “Third

Grillin’ & Smokin’ 01/26/2006 thru 01/26/09 (Left) 01/26/2009 forward (Right).

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More Grate Tools

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Continuing with some blog entries on tools, I figured I’d describe Microplane Graters next. These are invaluable in the Kitchen and make quick work of various grating tasks. Their heritage is actually from woodworking tools. The folks at Microplane developed a new process for making extra sharp woodworking rasps. People started using these as kitchen tools and Microplane took notice and developed a product line for use in the Kitchen. Microplane has a wide product line. In the picture above starting from the left are a fine grater, a medium ribbon grater, coarse grater from Microplane’s “Home” series. The last item is a spice grater form their so called “Classic” line which is most similar to their woodworking tools. Read More...
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This Scale Measures Up

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For a change of pace I figured I would start doing some blogs on some handy kitchen tools I use. This first entry will be on the digital scale I have been using lately. Where I have been baking a lot lately the scale has come in very handy, but it isn’t just for baking. When doing brines it is more accurate to weigh the salt. People on diets often resort to weighing out food portions too.
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Coldest Yet

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Last Saturday while enjoying grilled hamburgers with my parents, I decided hotdogs would be a good way to test my grill in the coldest weather yet. They were predicting single digits for the next Saturday. My mother asked if I’d even be able to use the grill for our weekly get together. I figured if the gas grill wasn’t up to the task I could always cook them on the stove using my grill pan. So this blog will be a little bit about attempt two at the hot dog rolls and grilling in the coldest weather yet for me. Read More...
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Hot Dog

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I’ve been on a roll lately in several senses of the word. This blog will be a little bit about baking (as it relates to my grilling) and a little bit about winter (direct) grilling. Both of those were items that until recently I wasn’t sure I could do. A class on baking a year ago and some experiments in winter grilling these last couple months have shown otherwise. Read More...
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More Winter Grilling

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I have been a bit fixated on direct Winter Grilling since discovering it was possible with my current gas grill. This blog entry will talk about my New Years grill & smoke where the air temps were in the teens and the winds were up in the 20’s (-4 C). It was a good thing I didn’t pay more attention to the weather or I would have been more nervous going into New Years. I was originally planning on making my beef tenderloin for late New Year’s Eve afternoon, but we ended up getting around 8” of snow during that same time. Rather than have my parents out trying to drive in the middle of that storm, I postponed dinner one day until New Year;s Day. Now even though it was bad driving, I was still able to make something. I did Chicken Breasts on the smoker. Read More...
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It’s In The Bag (Tip)

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On New Year’s Day you might be forgiven for thinking I might be describing my physical condition. But this is a quick tip for those of you with a FoodSaver. I had no intention of adding the first entry for my 2009 blog on New Year’s Day, but sometimes things just happen. Read More...
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