One of the things that excited me about buying the house we now inhabit was the grill. I've always had either charcoal grills or propane ones. Charcoal tends to have the best results flavor wise (in my experience) but propane can be much easier. That said, you have to replace the propane tanks and most of us that have used one in the past know the annoyance of running out of fuel half way through the cooking process.
Here is my current grill:
It is hooked up to our home's gas line and I have to say, I'm happy to sacrifice the flavor of charcoal for the convenience of always knowing I can grill, any time and will never not have fuel.
Any suggestions on how to get the most out of my gas grill? What is your grilling set up like? Are any of you proficient grillers or smokers of meat?Photos if you've got 'em.
Shout-out to OutbreakMonkey, humanodon and kleinbl00 as I know you are grillers.
Ah. I no longer own a grill. However, at one point I had a deck on the second level of a triple-decker house in a shitty part of Boston, on which I had arranged my hammock and grill such that I could grill while in the hammock. Now, the thing of it was, I would get some drinks in me while grilling and then fall asleep and more than once, woke up with burns on my elbow. I also used to drink at a place on the beach in Viet Nam that had a grill right next to the bar and of a weekend, would rock up with my crew and make ribs. We used hardwood charcoal because that's what was available. Fantastic stuff, if insanely long lasting. The best compliment I ever got was when people walking by on the beach wandered over and tried to buy the lunch out from under my friends and I. My man, you are in NC. The Carolinas have their own distinct barbecue tradition that I would absolutely love to explore. Though grilling is distinct from barbecue, I would imagine that in NC there are far greater grillmeisters than I. Does yours by any chance have a rotisserie? I have to say, some of the best chicken I've ever made was with a rotisserie and it was dead easy too. A pork shoulder is also nice that way. If I recall, your wife is vegetarian, no? If so, a gas grill is capable of making some pretty good baba ganoush but then, I love eggplant and I know that not everyone does. I've never had the opportunity to check out smoking as a method of food preparation, but with a really nice gas grill, I bet you can make some decent bacon or salumi if you are willing to be nontraditional about it. Ah, before I forget. A fish in foil is pretty perfect for a gas grill. Some of the best fish of my life has been prepared this way. You will need: 1 whole fish (a big one, or a few smaller ones) A big onion Some good tomatoes Some green onions Some herbs (dill is nice, as is basil, long cilantro if you can find it, even woody herbs like rosemary and sage) Some lemons or limes A whole lot of garlic Good olive oil Coarse salt Some black pepper Chili peppers (optional) Lay your foil down on the board and put down a layer of sliced tomatoes and onions. Sprinkle with salt. Add a layer of lemon slices too. Throw some crushed garlic on top and some sprigs of herbs. Coat lightly with the oil. Rub the fish with the oil, rub it with salt and pepper and then put a layer of lemon slices and herbs (including the whole green onions, washed with the roots sliced) on top, followed by a layer of lightly salted and oiled onions and tomatoes, with the crushed garlic. I like to put my chili peppers next to my fish, so the spice enters it. If the fish is really big, do all of that but first cut slits in it about two inches apart, perpendicular to the back, down to the belly and stuff herbs and garlic into them. Oh, also stuff the cavity of the fish and make sure to season it with salt. Wrap very tightly in the foil and then grill it . . . uh, until it's done. It's a pretty forgiving preparation and the lemon helps to ensure that it will be cooked. If it is kind of bland (in that the salt hasn't really penetrated the fish) make a 1:3 mixture in a ramekin of coarsely ground salt and black pepper and dissolve it in a squeeze of lime and maybe some of that olive oil. Add some chili if desired and dip bites of fish into it as you go. The drippings of the fish will go very well over rice/pilaf or even just with a very crusty bread.
I will be making that fish. Thank you for the recipe. I've been cooking a lot lately and learning some new "moves." The past two weeks I've made lentil soup and both times, it was pretty damn good. I look forward to preparing some fish a la Rico. How are things in Boston? You feel settled in yet?
Nice, I hope so! Though I can't take credit. I forget where I learned it from. Also, a super easy variation is to use mango salsa instead of sliced vegetables. Going ok and things are settling down a bit more, but wouldn't you know it, I forgot my wallet at home and I just found out I am getting observed tonight. Planning to catch up on evoxing tomorrow!
Don't have a setup, but I've been lucky enough to have spent the last three weekends in a row in front of a grill making dinner. Sockeye salmon each time. Tis the season for it and I can get a whole fish for $25 that was caught 10 hours ago and about 20 miles away. Living in the Pacific Northwest has its perks. Seafood is definitely one of them. I've been keeping it simple on the grill. Bit of butter and garlic. That's all. Let the fish speak for itself. We've also been catching dungeness crab in the old trap. Caught 14 the other day. After throwing back all females and the males under 6", I ended up with 7 crab. Head-butt them on the side of the boat, crack the breast plate and BAM - dinner is served. The other day, I even pulled the trap up out of 160 feet of water while standing on my paddle board. Had an 8 incher in there ready for the boiler. That's how you do summer people.
I live on the 3rd floor of a Southern California condo. Charcoal is so deeply against the CC&Rs that I don't think anyone would seriously consider it for more than a second or two. And, I live on the 3rd floor of a Southern California condo. My deck is awesome and spacious for what I got - probably 48 sqft - but sit a massive grillmonster out there and there's no room for anything. I've been rawkin' a Weber Go-Anywhere for about 4 years now. Problem is, I live in a marine environment. It's thrashed. It's ready to die. I have to light it with a burning Kleenex under the closed cover, which eventually goes WHOOOOOM and lifts the lid up about 4 inches (which I have to hold so that it doesn't plummet 3 stories and take out a neighbor). And last year, Weber "value engineered" the Go Anywhere to the point where it is universally reviled: It's no lie to say that I've spent 5 hours online searching for a replacement grill. There aren't a lot of choices for small, portable, gas-powered grills that don't suck. And for whatever reason, it never occurred to me to notice that I live in a marine environment with a space roughly the size of a Bayliner's cockpit. I had to wander down to West Marine in a vain search for metric stainless cap screws before discovering the solution: ...not that I have one yet. But it's gonna happen. ALL THAT TO SAY I'd ditch it in a minute if I could still cook with mesquite charcoal. There is no substitute.
I don't grill much in the city. Usually we just cook stuff on the campfire when we go to the countryside. Like this: This summer, in Albania we discovered we had a BBQ in the hostel. We asked in the morning if we could use it but they said "usually, we compile a list of people that want to have a BBQ and sell them the food after". That's no fun! So we somehow convinced them that everyone can buy their own food and grill it themselves ('twas not easy). We went out and got a bunch of veggies and shrimps. Best meal in a long time, I was getting sick of meat by that time (I didn't even know I could ever be sick of meat). Here's my boyfriend doing all the work:
For the record it's gas, although I'm certainly not averse to cooking with real fires. About a half dozen times, I've done an old fashioned pit roast of pork shoulder and lamb leg. Low tech, high heat, amazing results. It's my favorite way to cook, but it's an event. You have to budget two days and be prepared to drink at least 20 beers, while withstanding a 6 or 8 foot tall fire in the middle of summer. Not too many ways of cooking are nearly as ridiculous or as fun.
My friend has a pit roaster in his backyard. It sounds like something you are familiar with. He recently got some shit from his wife because he picked out his pig and his daughter was there and witnessed the pig being put down. She's four years old. Probably not the best call. You'd like this guy, he'd definitely put down 20 beers while cooking. If/when you visit next I'll make sure we roast a pig in your honor :)
Anytime pal. Truth be told, I don't think I'd want to watch the pig get slaughtered. There's something very "Lord of the Flies" about it.
I think it would make an excellent poem. I have written perhaps an alarming number of poems about things getting killed, killing things (people; metaphorically), and etc. Detailed conversations with hunters about how deer are skinned. Wikipedia searches about chickens. Etc. I may be morbid but I find it fascinating. It may make me queasy but I would rather (attempt to) have the experience.
I'm very tempted to get a small coal thing like the size of what kleinbl00 has pictured. Grills are strictly against the apartment rules, but those rules are bent and broken pretty regularly. I have a burner like this: Which is the closest thing to any grilling setup I have right now. Which is not at all grilling, actually.
To get the conversation started: I tend to marinate and grill chicken often. I do this because I can use it throughout the week to supplement the meals my wife and I prepare. She is a vegetarian. I also like to grill beef, usually Ribeye and will rub it with some olive oil and then just salt/pepper and the flame. What should I be grilling? I will usually have company over for dinner once a week and could use some ideas for easy center of the plate grilling options. Also, if anyone has any vegetarian options, that would be AWESOME.
Okay, this has come up a few times here but what's the phrase/word for when you see something for the first time, and then see it multiple times in a short period of time? Because I had never heard of Epicurious prior to today, when I bought a cookbook of theirs since it was on super-clearance-discount at the local Barnes and Noble, and now this recipe that you posted.
Not to diminish your Baader-Meinhofism, but Epicurious is the final resting place of Gourmet Magazine. I'm as big a fan of Allrecipes as anybody, and let's hear it for America's Test Kitchen, but Gourmet would do obnoxious shit like tell you how to smuggle Mangosteens aboard airlines and such. I have two Gourmet cookbooks - a 2-volume from 1951 and a 1-volume from 1949. They're off the hook. Their recipes are no joke. Unlike the watered-down Rachael Ray bullshit that propagates throughout culture these days, Gourmet was serious. They had a recipe for cassoulet or something that had an active time of 21 1/2 hours. Conde Nast spiked Gourmet but kept Bon Apetit, which was then and is now a bullshit pretender of a magazine. Not that you asked, but deep in the heart of Epicurious lurks real food.
The Recency illusion aka Baader-Meinhof phenomenon
I don't know about your salmon, but I do know about mediterranean mackerels O.O Open them up, clean them inside, stuff them with some garlic, olive oil and fresh herbs (some rosemary or parsley is good), throw them on a grill, flip them, brush some olive oil+garlic mix on them, flip again, more olive oil+garlic, keep repeating until tender. I am getting hungry, I just had breakfast...
Spoken like a denizen of the Rocky Mountains. Word to the wise - your salmon is shit. I should know; I grew up with it. You are adding onions and peppers and cajun spices to a perfectly noble fish because by the time it gets to you it's half-spoiled and since it's half-spoiled by the time it gets to you they're selling you farm-raised chum salmon because you can't tell the difference. Eat trout. Rocky mountain trout is generally caught within a day or two of when you eat it. It's in much better shape. Tuna travels better than salmon, as does Mahi Mahi. Sole is pretty rough, shellfish is pretty rough. But trout? Crawdads? Them's good eatin' in Colorado.
As someone that used to live in Michigan and sell food to restaurants, I can attest that most of your fish has been frozen twice and was caught in warmer waters. Ideally, what you want is a fish that's never been frozen and comes from cold waters. The colder the water, the higher the fat content. Just like in beef, with your fish you want good marbling. Flavor distribution. Mmmm... Go with the trout. I second that advice. Unless you buy some fresh, never frozen Salmon. If you do, it was likely swimming less than 72 hours prior and is in the $30-40 a pound range. Kind of pricey for Salmon. But we can't all live on the coast and we can't all afford fish that been drop shipped from Alaska/Hawaii. Sometimes decent Salmon is better than no salmon at all, right?
You've probably seen it sold as "Ahi." It's still tuna. Trust me, son. You think you're eating salmon. I thought I didn't like fish until I moved to a coast. I discovered how wrong I was. Then I ended up working on top of the Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle for 5 years and ended up on the super-secret-squirrel we-don't-tell-anybody-about-it call list for when the Yukon river king came in how many pounds do you want. For the longest time, America drank "coffee" while Seattle was drinking French roast Equadorian free-trade lattes. Now y'all are stuck with caring way too much about coffee. The stupid thing is, in Seattle salmon is sold by species and river. And it makes a difference. Yet you're still eating "salmon." If you're lucky, it's wild-caught. Which means it's chum, or "Keta." It's still the fish that the real fishermen use to catch the fish they want to eat.