AHHHH! The Perfect Burger

Who better to grill the The Perfect Burger with than Suzanne Benoit, of the VORTEX Bar & Grill in Atlanta. The VORTEX Burger has named the best burger in Atlanta 13 years in a row! VORTEX burgers are a juicy two fisted delight. Many trips into Atlanta have a trip to the VORTEX included. Suzanne joined me last week to patty and grill Perfect Burgers with GrillGrates. Over a beer in the backyard we make and sample juicy burgers made the Vortex way on GrillGrates.

The Perfect Burger is still one of my favorite grilled meals and we've expanded into stuffed burgers, turkey burgers, even burger logs with GrillGrates. The thing I like to see is how quickly flare-ups are tamed by the GrillGrates. The VORTEX uses only 80/20 ground chuck which makes for the juiciest possible burger, but also requires care not to get the burger engulfed in flames as the juices drip into the fire.

Grilling Pizzas

As a kid in New Jersey I made pizzas at Tony’s Pizzeria in Bridgewater for a couple of years going through college. Those were the disco years and we delivered pizzas on weekends at midnight to a local disco. I enjoyed loading up my orange Chevy Vega with fresh made pizzas. Tony would change shirts- not me I liked being a pizza maker! Flash forward 30 years and I’m making pizzas again. This time to promote GrillGrates our new product. I discovered MamaMary’s gourmet par-baked pizza crusts as we were putting together a recipe guide. At our first tradeshow, MamaMary’s came to the rescue after we ran out crusts on the second day of a nine-day cash and carry show. (Try taking your spouse to a nine-day show that happens over Super Bowl weekend!) We’ve grilled close to 1000 pizzas using MamaMary’s crusts over the past 6 months since MamaMary's FedEx'd dozens of crusts to us in a frozen Harrisburg. We had a grate show and grilled a lot of pizzas AND we had met and sold our first 150 customers! MamaMary’s is now a marketing partner and we include a coupon for a free package of their crust in every GrillGrate kit. We've heard from many of these first customers who have added more GrillGrates to their grill or bought sets for friends. We also had a super recipe posting from Chef Mike a kayak fisherman. But back to the pizza...

I have to tell you that MamaMary's crusts make fabulous grilled pizza! And its a 15-minute start to finish meal, or appetizer, even breakfast pizzas. You don’t have to be a gourmet doughmeister to grill grate pizza! MamaMary’s crusts crisp up just like Tony’s pizzas did. The partially backed crusts take care of the hard part so all that’s left is the fun of designing, building, grilling and eating your pizza. Just typing this makes we want to fire up the grill!

Sausage and Peppers-No Sauce!

Even though I'm not Italian, I've had the benefit of growing up in New Jersey and I worked in a couple of real Italian family restaraunts; so Sausage and Peppers is a staple that I grew up with. Now with my daughter the nutritionist and with prodding from my wife, I am broadening my culinary horizons. This grilled version is nothing like what I grew up on! It's healthier, greener and boy did I get a surprise when we sat down at the table-- no sauce! OK- I complained a bit but have to admit that it was delicious.

• Grilled Peppers- avoid charring
  
• Grilled Sausage- stuffed with spinach and fontina cheese
  
• Pasta Swirls

Mix together for a fancy twist on sausage and peppers!

Blogging is yet another thing I thought I'd never do.

Being an entrepreneur in the Internet age, and being 50 years of age is a double whammy for me. My uber-talented web & interactive guy has gone ahead and got me on Facebook (I'll definitely blog about that experience so far) YouTube- Ok I get that now- only used it a couple of times before. And now blogging. Where do you find all the time? Thank God my oldest daughter has helped me with all this social networking stuff- now what to say?