Some of you may have read my rant several posts ago about the kind of pork we see in the mega marts. They showcase really lean cuts of pork with virtually no marbling sealed up in Cryovac packages, swimming in an “enhancing” solution of water, salt and sodium phosphates. As a matter of fact, I was at my local market just last week and I ended up buying one of these packages. I went to begin brining the tenderloin and I noticed that there was an “ingredients” text block on the package. So, no brining. I was disappointed because I like to brine myself, but the loin came out pretty tasty on the rotisserie (more on that later). Well these chops were all natural. I got them along with some other goodies from Niman Ranch.

Last month, I was fortunate to receive a pretty decent bonus. So, before my wife got all of my our bonus money, I went out and treated myself to a new toy.



Now anyone who reads my blog, knows that I love barbecue and I love grilling. But, sometimes, I just want to come home and throw a couple of brats on the grill, top them with sauerkraut, and call it dinner. Building a hot coal fire for such a small amount of food, to me, can be both a waste of fuel and effort. So I bought that beauty for the convenience. I also got the rotisserie rig for it too. Don’t get me wrong, I am still true to my smoker and I love the way wood makes food taste, but a good grill flavor can be had on a gas grill with controlled flare-ups and a nice char.

So now my deck cooking space is almost complete. I will be adding a pellet smoker for cold smoking. Can you see homemade smoked bacon in my future? Maybe some smoked sausages! Yes…YES!!!

So for the first meal on this Cadillac of a grill I chose two really well marbled rib chops. I brined them in a quick solution of salt, sugar, rosemary, thyme, white, black, and red peppercorns.

For a side dish, I had to figure out a way to get quinoa, the super grain, into the mix. I was wandering the local Whole Paychex, as I often do, and I found this red quinoa.



I didn’t notice much of a flavor difference in the red quinoa versus the blanco, but I did notice that the texture was somewhat different. The grains didn’t adhere to each other as much; in fact they remained mostly separate. This was was actually good, since I was making a kind of pilaf.

To the quinoa, I added, chopped red onion, smoked mozzarella, fresh lady peas, and quartered cherry tomatoes. And this was good.



After the chops were brined, 3 hours, I patted them dry, cracked some pepper on them and tossed them on my new grill. I took care to get the aesthetically pleasing grill marks. While they were grilling, I whipped up the garlic lime sauce.

No words were spoken while we ate.

I have to say, that I love my new grill. It gets very, I mean very hot. I turned it on high to preheat it and it got up over 600 degrees-f! I’m thinking pizza on this baby sometime soon.

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I, and most, if not all of you, know that it has been seven years today since a cowardly group of freedom hating radical fundamentalists decided to inflict death and pain on innocent American citizens.



And in a flash…the towers; they were gone!

Today, my thoughts are with all who lost loved ones on this day in 2001. Today my thoughts are with my sisters and brothers at arms and in service to this country. Stay lock-step and keep your head down!



I personally will never forget! Neither should you…

Halibut: means holy butt. Haly (holy) and butt (flat fish).

Will someone please tell me why this fish, the halibut, costs so much money? I think I paid $17 USD per pound. That is a lot or money considering that the cousin of this fish is the flounder which costs, at its most expensive, around $9 - $11 per pound. That’s right, the halibut is essentially a flounder. It is a bottom dweller. Just like the flounder, the halibut is born with both eyes in the front of its head. It swims like a salmon at first. One of the eyes will migrate onto the side of the head placing it on the same side as it’s opposing eye making it look like a flounder. I know one thing, if I ever saw a halibut in its natural habitat, it would scare the devil out of me. I would probably think of it as a bizarro flounder as these fish grow to about 40 pounds and can grow as large as 900 pounds! Flounder is actually on the list of food stuff eaten by these monsters; as is salmon, crab, pollack, and cod! Well, this day, the halibut lost out on the food chain as we were alpha and put him on the list of food stuff. And it was good.



After finding a local farmer’s market close to me, I went a little shopping; kinda like Emelda Marcos shopping for shoes. The corn and peaches were abundant that particular weekend and I remembered reading in one of my foodie rags about this peach succotash.

So the assembly began with my grill being loaded with about 15 coals and mesquite hardwood chunks. Mind you, these chunks are the same that I use to smoke except this time I use them as the fuel. If I were to use them in a smoking application, I would soak them so that they would smoke for a significant time before burning. This time I wanted them to burn. The fire from the wood will provide the flavor as well as cook the food. With halibut having a unique sweet flavor of its own, it only requires salt and pepper, and a brush of olive oil, nothing more.

Onto the grill went the veggies. They were cooked until just soft. The corn was then removed from the cob, the peaches and pepper diced, and all was tossed with some good butter.

The halibut was grilled over the wood at high heat for about 4 minutes per side. It cooks pretty quickly. When using the wood as for smoking, the fish would have had to be exposed to the smoke for about 15 to 20 minutes before any significant mesquite flavor could be imparted. With the wood actually being used as the fuel, this is not an issue. Mesquite can quickly over power a delicately flavored fish like halibut, but with a high heat and quick cooking, the flavor infused by the wood is noticeable, but no where near over powering.

The fish turned out juicy and flaky. Topped with the succotash and add a side of rice, and ask yourself, do I really need a weekend to fire up the grill?

Anyone who knows barbecue knows brisket. It is truly the big daddy of barbecue. Now I just treated myself to a brand new Weber Genesis grill and boy I am loving it (more on that later). But I would never cook a brisket on it. No, never. This tough piece of beef, basically it is a pectoral muscle, needs low, slow, smoky, love. Wow, odd snippets of Barry White just popped into my head…oh yeah…looooow…slooooow…baby!

Now the brisket is versatile. It is used as corned beef, pot roast, cut up for stews, pastrami, and is really big in a host of Asian dishes. For me, it is the true king of barbecue and I know a gaggle of guys who, by their own admission, just cannot make it. I don’t know what their issue is, but even some BBQ joints that I have been to serve up smoky, chewy, jerky-like, shoe soles, calling it brisket.

Yes, I have had my mishaps; once I made a brisket using too much mesquite wood and well, it tasted something like an isopropyl alcohol filled astray. I once used the leaner cut of the brisket and made shoe leather. I was determined to learn and at least brisket isn’t priced like tenderloin. It is cut just above the first shank for goodness sake; not a pricey piece of meat.

That cut in the picture above is not a whole brisket. I mean, it is totally brisket, just not the entire muscle. Brisket is typically an 11-14 pound piece of meat. There is only two of us here and I would have to give away a lot of that smoky goodness. I mean, I could spend 17 hours smoking that huge chunk of meat, but there was coleslaw to make. Whole brisket is actually two muscles with opposing grains. The “flat", or “first cut", is the lean cut. It has little marbling and fat. It makes for good pastrami. No one wants fatty pastrami. The second part is the called the “second cut", or “point". It is the most marbled and has more fat. It is the collagen in it that literally melts when slowly brought to temperature making the meat moist. The cut you see there is the second cut. Check out that large surface area of pretty fat. That my friends keeps the meat from drying out when subjected to long, slow, cooking.

Now I do have to confess that making a tasty brisket takes some patience. You will need to smoke this cut for about 1 1/2 hours per pound. The collagen melts at around 185 to 190 degrees-f. You don’t want to go much beyond that temperature though otherwise you will have jerky. Not to worry, at cooking temperatures ranging between 215 to 225 degrees, the temperature of the meat rises slowly. Once it hits 185 degrees, you will fall in lock step with Pavlov’s pooches in the salivation department, just anxious to get that meat out of the smoker and into your belly!

Like my ribs, I start my brisket with a dry rub which is pictured above. I rubbed it liberally with Dijon mustard to hold the spices then I mix and apply chili powder (thanks Krysta!), hot paprika, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, lots of brown sugar, oregano, cayenne pepper, celery salt, and black pepper. And I do mean liberally. Then using cling wrap, that doesn’t cling to shit, I wrap the meat and refrigerate overnight. Remove the meat 1 hour before smoking and bring to room temperature.

I use wood all the way with barbecue. That smoke prep above is a bucket of hickory wood chunks and the charcoal is hard wood charcoal. Hard wood charcoal burns hotter, and faster, but much cleaner with much less ash. I used one 10 pound bag of hard wood and about 3 pounds of hickory for this application.

After the first hour, I begin mopping the brisket every 1 1/2 hours with a mop sauce consisting of cider vinegar, olive oil, beer, paprika, salt, and black pepper .

My patience is rewarded! Just look at that smoke ring. As you can see, it is juicy too!

I got the recipe for the caramelized onion barbecue sauce at Garrett’s Table

And leftovers were thinly sliced, gently warmed, topped with provolone cheese, and sauteed onions for a really great sandwich!

Mmmkay…I’ve seen this floating amongst the blogosphere and I decided to participate. It really is an introspection as well as a meme. I may not want to try the items in the list that I have not already eaten, but then again, I may. Eating is what I love to do. And when something is prepared well and is delicious, well I may not care what it is, I’m indulging. Whatever the case, maybe you all should try this meme. More information can be had here.

Here’s what to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese (What about scrapple?)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Sourdough Bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (Yes…yes…yes!)
37. Clotted Cream Tea
38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (In training in the Army)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (I am in Atlanta)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini (Shaken…not stirred)
58. Beer above 8% ABV (I wish!)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill (Possum counts?)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (these were my favorite when I was young)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu (Haven’t a clue where to do this)
85. Kobe beef (Yup yup!!!)
86. Hare (Well I have had rabbit)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake