I winterized our deck! I reconfigured the grills, bringing the Yoder Pellet Smoker front and center figuring its going to see more action this winter and the Kamado Joelikely will see less. I rolled the Joe to the back of the porch content to have quick access out the kitchen door. It only took one grilling to roll the Kamado Joe back too! I missed the Roost Table from Select Outdoor Kitchens immediately. The drawers are water tight and house lighters, thermometers, jars of pellets and more. And I find I use the KJ for higher heat cooks and searing.
I expected a little push back from my wife but she just smiles and humors me. As long as I keep on grilling I should be good to go. I'm going to keep a journal on a calendar this winter to track which grill I use and what we grilled. Tonight and tomorrow the Yoder gets big-time duty in the cold. Looking forward to smoking our turkey on the YS400 tomorrow! Happy Thanksgiving and Welcome to Winter Grilling!
This
year take the turkey out of the kitchen and outside to the grill
where it belongs!
Break the tradition of roasting your turkey in the
oven and enjoy the camaraderie and flexibility of cooking your turkey
on the grill. Freeing up your oven leaves more options for sides and
desserts too. This year, grill your best bird and start a new
tradition with these basic steps and 3 easy recipes from Chef
Michael.
Fresh is best. Buy
a turkey that hasn't been frozen. Don't buy one with a pop-up timer,
or one injected with oils and flavorings.
Brining is a must.
Even if the packaging claims a
'juicy' bird, brining is essential. If it does come with a pop-up
timer, remove it! Do not trust a 5 cent apparatus to tell you when
your bird is cooked properly.
Use
either a dual probe or instant read thermometer to monitor
breast temperature to 160F and thigh to 180F
Grill
your turkey low and slow, ideally keep your grill below 350F.
You'll
need a cooler or a trash can to brine the bird overnight. Making your
own brine is easy or buy pre-packaged kits from Fire and Flavor. Brines are primarily a salt, sugar and water mix with
spices and herbs. All three recipes below include an overnight
brining. Complete recipes, preparation and grilling instructions are
on grillgrate.com
Spatchcocked
and Brined Grilled Turkey. Not to be confused with butter-flying
which is splitting the breast. Spatchcocking involves cutting out
the backbone entirely and removing the keel bone or “breast plate”
and flattening the breast. You will need heavy duty shears or a
cleaver to cut through the ribs. Spatchcocking allows the thigh and
legs to cook more directly while the breast meat won't overcook and
dry out. Link to recipe
De-constructed
Maple Brined with Sugar Maple Smoke. One step beyond
spatchcocking is to deconstruct the bird into parts. This allows
for more flexibility and perfectly timed breast and thigh cooks.
Grill the bird low and slow (350F or less) for maximum juiciness.
The presentation of the parts is truly greater than the whole! Link to recipe
Whole
Roast Turkey with Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and Bacon. We suggest a
roasting pan and rack if your plan is to grill the bird whole, but
don't stuff it. Our friend Meathead is against stuffing turkeys. By
the time the stuffing is cooked through, the meat is overcooked.
Replace the stuffing with fruits and vegetables instead. This recipe
includes a tomato pesto with bacon that is rubbed under the skin for
added moisture and flavor. Capture the wonderful juices for gravy. Link to recipe
Grab some grate video and win grate gifts!
Nothing fancy or produced, just YOU telling us what you love about
GrillGrates, your favorite food, a tip, what you won??? (That means YOU
our steak champion friends!)
Simple Rules: Just video of YOU at YOUR GRILL with GrillGrates!
Show us Your GrateTool! etc.
Just grab your phone or video camera
and answer 1 or more of these questions:
We just want YOU to be YOU!
What do you tell a friend about
GrillGrates?
What is your favorite feature?
How long have you been using
GrillGrates?
Any awards and accolades?
At some point please clearly state
your full name (very important)
MAX 2:00 Minutes 20 to 30 seconds is
just grate!
We want to feature 5-7 grate
customers in the 2014 GrillGrate TV commercial. This year's TV spot
aired 5200 times April thru August. Our neighbors did a grate job
acting out a flareup, and for the 3rd year Mike Mills of17th Street Barbecue anchors the spot. We love Mike! Everyone
loves Mike!
We want YOU! In the 2014 GrillGrate commercial. DEADLINE to Enter 12/1/13 Submit via YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, email etc.
ALL ENTRIES receive a new product! Grate Tongs of course!
( coming Oct 1)
Those appearing in the TV spot will receive a $200 gift certificate from Omaha Steaks!
2-zone grilling is
another one of those GRATE DUH moments for me! I had the
pleasure
Separating GrillGrates breaks their conductivity
of getting into a long conversation with Chris Finney the
fellow who is widely credited with popularizing the reverse sear
method for large cuts of meat. During our conversation he asked if I
ever separated the GrillGrates on my grill to create a hot zone and a
not so hot zone? Duh! That would be no!
That night I
put 2 GrillGrates to the left, 3 to the right and the gap was about
1” between them. I used my infrared gun to measure the temps at
the GrillGrates and was floored by the extreme difference in temps I
was able to achieve on my trusty old Charbroil grill.
Left side is at 550F, the right is 350F
I used to have challenges grilling
vegetables at the same time I grill steaks or burgers because they get grilled hot! Asparagus really doesn't grill well at 650F! Now I
reduce the one side of my grill to low or off and have the other side
hot as I need it.
We regularly roast corn, peppers, sweet potatoes,
beets- you get the idea!
Please share your experience with 2-zone or any other creative ways to use GrillGrates!
Sept 27th Update.Meathead (amazingribs.com) asked me to emphasize that pre-smoking is NOT COOKING
it is a way to impart smoke then cook as normal. Cold smoking fish and meat is a
preservation process best left to the pro's. Pre-smoking food followed by a normal cook still requires proper food safety handling and cross contamination awareness. Be careful out there! We want all our grate friends and customers
healthy! Thanks Meathead! (the post below has been modified to eliminate the improper use of the word cold-smoking)
I've
found a new use for my old Weber Kettle. I only break it out for
steaks anymore and the Kettle actually got removed from the deck...
for a while. But the Weber Kettle is back on the deck and smoking
again!
Lit the tube before the grill
I
recently added the A-Mazen Tube Smoker to my arsenal of grill tools. It was all the rain we've had in Georgia that led me to purchase the
Tube Smoker so I could bring more smoke to grilling ribs on my gas
grill. My evolution as a griller has brought me to the threshold of
achieving great smoke but only in the ceramic Kamado Joe which has
seen little use with all the rainy weekends we've had this summer.
Boy
was I impressed the first time I lit the A-Mazen Tube Smoker a
few weeks ago. Once lit it smouldered beautiful smoke for more than
two hours over a couple racks of ribs that were on my Charbroil low
and slow. I have not stopped playing since.
I
have to interject a recent conversation with a customer who emailed
pictures of BBQR's Delights pellets in the valleys of his
GrillGrates. I emailed him back to ask about the smoke profile he
achieved with the rib-eyes. “Some smoke flavor but not much”
was Chris's reply. He sent me to his post on the Virtual WeberBulletin Board where he shares his perfect way to grill smokey
rib-eye steaks. His technique calls for using two grills:
Weber
Kettle with lots of chips and low temps to pre-smoke and slowly bring
the steaks up to temp.
Then onto a very hot gas grill with
GrillGrates to sear in the end.
This technique is known as “sear
in the rear”
This led me to the idea of pre-smoking steaks on the Weber before
grilling them hot and fast as normal. No charcoal heat, just smoke
for 20 minutes, A modified sear in the rear-Pre-Smoking followed by Hot Grilling!
Pre-Smoking on the Weber Kettle- No heat, just smoke!
Another
tid-bit Chris shared is to bring the meat into the smoke cold-
directly from the refrigerator as colder meat accepts smoke better.
Hotter (grilled) meats do not accept smoke hardly at all.
The
salted steaks spent an hour on a rack in the refrigerator and then
rack and all went onto the Weber with the Tube Smoker below puffing away
Jack Daniels barrel flavored smoke. Whatever the outcome I was
enjoying the process! I don't smoke cigars, but watching the Kettle
billow smoke made me want to grab my scotch and a cigar! My
wife astutely pointed out that I found a way to play with my meat
longer!
All
puns aside, I got a 'Standing O' from a very
tough crowd! Of course we are repeating the process tonight to
try it out on a few friends. Pre-smoking and hot grilling
what a grate combination!
Thank You to 2 Grate customers for the
inspiration and Meathead for his help on my misuse of the term cold-smoking!
August 8th Update. My wife accuses me of trying to smoke everything! Frankly she's right. Tonight its salmon for a brief smoke prior to hot and fast grilling.
Meet
Michael Dellaporta! Michael has been our part time IT / Webmaster
for the past two years while working full time as a chef. Now he's
flipping his career to become full time with GrillGrate for IT/Web
support AND to become our corporate chef and culinary liaison to our
customers. Sounds like a grate job, Welcome Michael!
Michael
has been a professional chef for nearly 20 years; working in boutique
restaurants in Vail, CO (BK... before kids) and most recently at a
respected downtown restaurant here in Cartersville, GA. Over the
past 2 years Michael has been my culinary advisor as well. He's done
trade shows with us and has helped us gain business with commercial
customers in catering, restaurant, and food service.
Michael
will also help with recipe development, blogging, social media and
YouTube videos. Michael is an avid griller. He owns two Weber
grills- a Genesis Silver gas grill and his baby, a 18.5 inch
kettle. He also owns a custom water smoker. A die hard lump charcoal
guy, Michael grills 4-5 times a week. Now he'll be grilling once a
week at the office too!
Grilling Lunch Once a Week, add to the job description!
We love getting feedback like this! From Mike B. in CA
"60 years on the Planet, and 33 of them
with the same Babe who has endlessly lamented the absence of nice
uniform grill marks on her BBQ like she gets in the fancy steak houses.
Then came my beloved Grill Grates. I waited 6 months to write you
folks, after cooking EVERYTHING except Pizza. 33 years and the wife
finally... truly... loves me totally. She has her perfect grill marks
every time and even better, perfect steaks, ribs, chops, burgers,
chicken (whole or part) and... so far everything else I have cooked. We
have both enjoyed a literal change in our lifestyle because of Grill
Grates, so we are building a 6' x 12' covered and windowed BBQ patio
onto the house that has the grill opposite a window in the kitchen so we
can cook 24/7-365 and hand the raw and cooked meals through the window,
rain or shine! We cook our breakfast sausage on the Grill Grates...
start slow, (off the flame) and then crisp over the flame. Real sausage
casings will snap in your mouth like a rubber band. Bacon only gets
slow cooked on Grill Grates at our house. No more messy pans or stove
to clean, and the end results put a pan or Jenn Air to total shame.
Grill Grates are by far and away one of the best darn BBQ inventions
ever. Who would have thought Grill Grates could improve your love life?"
We're sending Mike a GrillGrate T shirt and looking forward to seeing a picture of him at the grill through their new BBQ window!
Spatchcocked
and Brined Grilled Turkey. Not to be confused with butter-flying
which is splitting the breast. Spatchcocking involves cutting out
the backbone entirely and removing the keel bone or “breast plate”
and flattening the breast. You will need heavy duty shears or a
cleaver to cut through the ribs. Spatchcocking allows the thigh and
legs to cook more directly while the breast meat won't overcook and
dry out. Link to recipe
De-constructed
Maple Brined with Sugar Maple Smoke. One step beyond
spatchcocking is to deconstruct the bird into parts. This allows
for more flexibility and perfectly timed breast and thigh cooks.
Grill the bird low and slow (350F or less) for maximum juiciness.
The presentation of the parts is truly greater than the whole! Link to recipe
Whole
Roast Turkey with Sun Dried Tomato Pesto and Bacon. We suggest a
roasting pan and rack if your plan is to grill the bird whole, but
don't stuff it. Our friend Meathead is against stuffing turkeys. By
the time the stuffing is cooked through, the meat is overcooked.
Replace the stuffing with fruits and vegetables instead. This recipe
includes a tomato pesto with bacon that is rubbed under the skin for
added moisture and flavor. Capture the wonderful juices for gravy. Link to recipe
.jpg)
I
have to interject a recent conversation with a customer who emailed
pictures of BBQR's Delights pellets in the valleys of his
GrillGrates. I emailed him back to ask about the smoke profile he
achieved with the rib-eyes. “Some smoke flavor but not much”
was Chris's reply. He sent me to his post on the Virtual WeberBulletin Board where he shares his perfect way to grill smokey
rib-eye steaks. His technique calls for using two grills:
