I want to come clean. I think I have a problem...

OK, so I have come to grips with this. They say admitting you have a problem is the hardest part. I tried to hide it from my family and friends, but I don't think I can keep living a lie. I have a problem. I am woefully and hopelessly addicted. There is nothing I can do. I'm ready to come clean.

I have a lamb problem....

I will be doing lamb again tonight. Not the french cut rib racks this time. This time I'm doing some nice meaty lamb chops. I got a great package of eight fat lamb chops that I split into two sets of four. One set I will do tonight, the other I put in the freezer. I applied the same marinade to both.

First let's get a look at these bad boys. As usual the celly is there for reference:




I used the same pesto I used the last time I did the rib racks but with a little twist this time:


And that twist is rosemary:


Rosemary is the perfect herb for lamb. It's like Pastrami and Rye. Peanut Butter and Jelly. Prime Rib and Horsey Sauce, Bacon and Eggs. The flavors just go so well together.

A little about rosemary. I grow a rosemary plant year round. Outside in the warm months, inside in front of a window in the cold months. Rosemary is extremely drought tolerant and likes rocky soil so no fertilizer is recommended. What does all that mean? It means if you water this thing, maybe once a month you can have fresh rosemary all year long.

One thing with rosemary grown at home as opposed to what you buy at the store is that you may get some woody branches. The stuff in the store is all new growth and can just be rough chopped stems and all. You have to be a little more careful with the stuff you grow at home. Here is a sprig of new growth:


And here is a sprig of woody growth:


Peal the leaves off both and here is that the stems look like:


The top one will be noticeably hard even after cooking it if it were diced up and added to the marinade. The bottom one would be fine if it were chopped and added to a marinade and cooked.

So I stripped the leaves off the woody branches and had a nice pile of rosemary:


And a few seconds with a Santoku and my rosemary is now just beyond a rough chop and ready for the marinade:


I basically split the chopped rosemary into four amounts. Two amounts were larger than the other two. The two larger amounts went into the bag with the chops I will grill the next day. And the other two amounts go into the bag going into the freezer. Why two amounts each? One for each side of the chops in the bag. Why two different size amounts? The ones going into the freezer will incur more rosemary flavor due to a longer time in the marinade than the ones being cooked 24 hours later.

Here we have the two bags. One destined for my grill in 24 hours or so and one heading to the bitter chill of my freezer:


And since I have not actually grilled them yet, you will have to wait till tomorrow for the rest of the write up.

I will say this though, I will be trying to use my newest grill gadget tonight, just not sure if it will work on lamb chops. It really needs a larger cut of meat but I will try anyway. A little tease as to what it is. My wife heard about it and said, "that is the most obnoxious, useless and ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. My husband will love it!!!"

1/2/2009 - Sorry I have neglected this post for so long. One word - Holidays.

I teased my latest grill gadget in the first half of the post. It's not going to be as exciting as I previously thought. It will be really cool in the future, it just didn't work all that well with the lamb chops. That grill gadget is this:


What is that? It's a branding iron with my initials:


Yes, the GrillinFool's initials are SGT. Seems more like a rank than initials, but they're the only ones I've got. Two problems with the branding iron. First, the chops just aren't big enough for me to get the initials branded well. The chops are basically mini porterhouse steaks which have the bone running down the middle which made it hard to find enough meat to get a good brand. Here is about the best I got and I tried it on two different chops:


Second, having never used a branding iron before I had no idea how long it took for the iron to get hot, so by the time it was hot I had over cooked my lamb just a bit. The lamb was medium rather than rare to medium rare. It was still really good, just a little overdone for my taste.

Well, back to the process. After 24 hours in the marinade I pulled the chops and put them on a plate to let them come up to room temp:


And the the beverage to accompany this meal is not wine but Sam Dark:


I love this beer. Not extremely thick and dark like a Guiness or Murpheys stouts but still packed with a lot of great flavor.

Evidently when I used this pesto with the rib rack I removed a lot of it before putting it on the grill. For these I just threw some coarse salt on each side and threw them on the heat. See, that pesto is really flamable. I wasn't looking for a really intense sear like I do with steaks for a couple of reasons. One, the chops may be big in terms of lamb chops but much smaller than a steak and searing them that much would make it hard to keep them medium rare. Second, branding my initials won't look as cool if the chops had a dark crust. So here they are searing:


And here we have them resting. If you look close you can see a couple attempts at branding the chops here:


And here we have the money shot. Like I said not as rare as I normally cook them but they were still really juicy and delicious:


Things I would do to improve these lamb chops:

1. Remove a lot of the marinade before throwing them on the grill.
2. Not try to use the branding iron on such small cuts but you know how it is when you get a new toy!! Gotta play with it right away.
   

One more thing about lamb as I think I will put lamb to rest for a while, at least on this site. Of course I will continue to grill it but I think I have gone a little overboard here for a while. Between lamb chops and the rib racks...Rib racks win hands down. The meat is more flavorful and, this may seem to be a non issue to some, but to get all the meat off the chops requires a lot of work. The meat that is up against the middle bone at the top of the chop (where the bone forms a T) can really only be removed with your fingers if you want to get all of it. In the end it is a huge mess. Sure, I used my fingers when eating the rib racks, but I never touched the meat, just that beautifully designed bone handle!!

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Meat Loaf on the grill

Many people think of Meatloaf as some sort of blah food. It is what it is. Hamburger, some onion, an egg, maybe some ketchup or BBQ sauce, maybe some breadcrumbs, etc. Nothing all to exciting. Well, if your meatloaf is missing that certain something that you can't put your finger on, then take notes. It's pretty amazing what a grill and a couple apple chunks can do for meatloaf.


Here is the process for making the meatloaf. I made two small meatloaves. About 2 pounds each. I started with two pounds of ground sirloin and two pounds of ground chuck:
I added just a little garlic:
Some fresh grated Romano:
Half a diced medium onion:
Then I added some ketchup and a beaten egg:
Worcestershire sauce with some emulsified garlic:
After that I added many turns black pepper, about a teaspoon and a half of salt, and a few squirts of Chipotle Tobasco Sauce and then mixed it all together with my hands.

***One very important note for meat loaf. Do not knead the meat too much. Mix the ingredients all together but do not mash the meat up too much. You actually want the meatloaves to remain porous. It should have cracks and crevices (unlike a stuffed fatty).

Here are the two loaves in their perspective pans:
The one on the left I slathered with regular tobasco. I was out of my fave, the Chipotle, so I added some Penzey's Chipotle powder on top of the Tobasco. Since the wife isn't into hot food I put a toothpick in that one to differentiate that from the one I did not spice up.

I was heading to probably the only place in St. Louis that sells Halloumi cheese when I stopped in to my favorite wine store in the St. Louis area - Grapevine Wines. At first I got a rather quizzical look from one of the proprietors when I asked what would pair well with grilled meatloaf. I was thinking a merlot but he recommended a French Red to me. As I have said on many occasions that I am not someone that drinks European wines as I just don't know that much about them. I will drink one on someones recommendation but I don't really touch them much. But these guys at Grapevines know what they are talking about. They have never sent me astray. They don't run a store where they push something just because they have a lot of it. When they recommend something I know it's going to be amazing. And as usual they were correct:
I was told that this Vacqueyras Red Rhone would be spectacular and that the last glass would be the best due to aeration of the wine. So I decanted the wine for about 30 minutes so it would be well aerated for every glass:
I have to tell you the wine was spectacular and paired perfectly with the meat loaf. Just to be honest, I do not have any marketing agreement whatsoever with Grapevines. I just love the store and the people that run/own the place are top notch.

Enough gushing about Grapevines. Time to go check on my fire. Seems that it just may be ready to dump my charcoal chimney into the grill:



While the wine was aerating I put the meatloaves on the grill, coals to the top with a chunk of apple and the meatloaves towards the bottom so that I get some smoke flavor while taking some time to cook the meatloaves:
Despite the high wind and cold temps I was able to keep the temp at right about 300 for most of the session:
I would've liked to have gotten the temp to 350 for 60 minutes. But I just couldn't get the fire that hot in that wind. So I went with 300 degrees for 90 minutes.

About an hour in the loaves are looking pretty good (as well as some Halloumi cheese I added which I will talk about in another thread):

After 90 minutes I pulled the loaves off the grill to rest inside. I took these pictures before I drained the fat out of the pans:
My wife was kind enough to offer this wonderful bowl full of mash potatoes as her contribution to the meal:
My favorite comfort food in the world is meatloaf and mash potatoes. I was about to be in heaven.

And here we have the meat loaf plated over a pile of those excellent mash potatoes:

What I should've done differently:

1. My dad suggested I mix a pound of sausage into the meat instead of going all beef. I probably should've done this. I needed a bit more fat since half the meat was ground sirloin.
2. With that in mind I should've done a second egg. A meat loaf should be a bit wet after everything is mixed together and this wasn't. The flavor was still great, it was just missing a bit of the fattiness that would've made it stellar...

I almost forgot the movie for the festive evening so close to Christmas:


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Fall Off the Bone Baby Backs

Since nothing says Merry Christmas like smoked ribs, I thought I would share the last time I did a big batch of ribs.

When it comes to ribs I think there are two kinds of people - those that like them to fall off the bone and those that like them moist and chewy. I fall in the latter category, but I have no problem with those that are in the former. And if I cook my ribs a bit too long and they are fall off the bone I will still enjoy them a great deal. I mean if the worst thing that happens to me in a day is that I have to eat ribs that fall off the bone I've had a good day!?!

On this such occasion I was at my in-laws. My in-laws like fall off the bone, sauced ribs. Since that is what my audience wanted, that's what I gladly made. My FiL is the type of guy to get up at the crack of dawn and smoke ribs for 8-10 hours. I just don't have that kind of time. And I can provide them with exactly what they want in under four hours. That's right, four hours for fall off the bone ribs....

The ribs were marinaded in apple cider, garlic and black pepper over night. The next day my MiL made her wonderful Cumin based rub. Cumin, garlic, some brown sugar, onion powder and black pepper. I'm sure I left out some ingredients so I will check with her and update this post when I know more.

I salted the ribs with some coarse salt and then applied the rub and threw them on the my FiL's sweet Brinkman Offset Smoker. I held back one half slab for myself for a little while so they would not be fall off the bone. Here they are with all of the slabs on the grill:


I know some of you are looking at that pic and see that the coals are actually in the cooking chamber rather than the firebox. This was required to achieve my goal of fall off the bone BBRs in under four hours. To do so I needed to raise the temp from the standard 225 to closer to 275. In order to accomplish this I needed the fire in the cooking chamber rather than the firebox. I slid the grill grates over to the right to have easier access to the fire to add wood and more charcoal.

I was having one problem at this point. The ribs were practically stacked on top of each other which would slow the cooking process as they would insulate each other. I had a couple of options, try to transfer red hot coals from the cooking chamber to the fire box (and add a ton more charcoal to get the temp up) or find away to separate the ribs. After a little digging in the garage I found a rib rack. Problem solved:

In the above pic you can see the lead from my thermometer that leads to the base (out of the pic). With long cooking chambers like this, the thermometer built into the middle of the top of the grill can be off by more than 50 degrees or so from the ends of the grill. I wanted to see what the temp my ribs were at right near where they were cooking.

After 2 hours on the grill, it was time for the foil. Put the ribs on the foil bone side down, slather with either honey or syrup. For a really great bark add more rub but it's not necessary. These were getting sauced so no extra rub:


After I took this pic I just stacked them on top of each other, folded up the foil around them and back on the grill. After 45 minutes or so in the foil I pulled them, and dunked them in a disposable tin foil pan full of sauce.

The sauce was kicked up Cattleman's. I took a sauce pan, added some oil, brought some minced garlic up to a sizzle, added some brown sugar and syrup, as well as fresh cracked black pepper. Cooked that for a bit and then added the sauce. Half a pumpkin ale and cooked it down for about an hour to thicken.

While I was doing all of this I also threw on some rib tips. While I normally cook those as a chef's prerogative and enjoy them throughout the smoking process these were for my BiL's girlfriend (now fiance) who likes ribs but doesn't like the bones. Here are the ribs in their BBQ sauce bath, the tips off to the side and my half slab in foil. I hadn't gotten to removing my slab from the foil yet:


I put the ribs in the sauce right over the heat so they would cook some more in the sauce to guarantee that fall off the bone consistency. Here is a closeup of the ribs in the BBQ bath:


I left the ribs in the sauce for about 30 minutes. So total cooking time was just under 3.5 hours.

This was the second time in about a month I was to grill ribs. I didn't get a chance to do this method the time before as my FiL's neighbor started the grill up and put everything on about eight in the morning. When we ate at 6 that night, they were great. I kept telling my FiL that I could do the same in four hours.

So there we are, sitting around the table chowing on ribs and sides. After a few bones, my FiL, looks at me and says, "four hours?" After a couple more bones says it again. All in all I think he said that about 6 times. He just couldn't believe what he was eating only took four hours.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not a proponent of rushing anything on the grill. Less time grillin meand less time chillin. But I just can't do 10 hours on the grill. Maybe in a Big Green Egg where you set it and forget it, but not with the equipment available to me.

BTW, I did this method with spares about 6 weeks prior. No pics. The wife had obsconded with the camera. I'd heard about this higher temp shorter time method and wanted to see if it worked. I did two hours in the smoke, and then 90 minutes in the foil. As I was pulling one of the half slabs from the foil, one of the bones hit the edge of the foil that was sticking out and the bone actually fell out of the meat!!! Think about that for a second. How much resistance does tin foil have? Next to none. And the entire bone fell out of the half slab. I almost laughed outloud and was really sorry I didn't have the camera!?!?

To finish the spares I put them back on the grill for 30 minutes. I realize that the meat was done after 3.5 hours, but I needed to caramelize the bark as they were sauceless ribs. At the higher temp that only takes about 30 minutes. So for Spares, four hours is all you need for fall off the bone ribs.

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Anyone want to smoke a fatty?

For some of you that means something very different than what I will discuss in this entry. This is not a something related to sparking up a blunt. This is simply sausage smoked on a grill. There are a million ways to make fatties. Fatties can be sweet, stuffed, spicy and all things in between.

To make a fatty, one must purchase some sort of loose or bulk sausage. I've made them with one pound breakfast sausage as well as bulk sausage from the meat counter at the grocery store. Here is a cheese stuffed Fatty:

Click below if you want know more...


The first fatty I ever made was the same day I did the spiral sliced and stuffed pork loin. For that fatty I took a one pound tube of maple breakfast sausage and put it in a mixing bowl. I minced up some of the following: garlic, vidalia onion and about half a honey crisp apple and added that to the mixing bowl. A little cracked black pepper and some brown sugar completed the ingredients. I mixed all of that together and then reshaped the sausage into the form it was in when it was in the plastic tube. Then I applied a sweet rub of paprika, brown sugar, granulated garlic, chili powder and black pepper. The fatty is on the left:
No salt at all on this. There is plenty of salt in the pork.

There is nothing to cooking these things. Throw them on the grill for about 3 hours between 225-250. When it firms up it is done. You don't really have to flip them over or turn them. You can put bacon on them to baste the meat, but it is not required. Having a second level rack in my offset smoker is a great place for fatties to cook. I like to put them over something else I am cooking so the fat drips over the other meat or dish. I've put these over baked beans and in this case I put it over the pork loin:
When I close the grill lid that rack moves forward a few inches and the fatty is right over the loin. I've also put them over ribs:

After a couple of hours the fatty and the loin are coming along nicely:
Here are the loin and the fatty resting:
And here we have the loin and fatty plated:
I have also done stuffed fatties. Fatties can be stuffed with anything, cheese, potatoes (someone just mentioned to me Tater Tots which sounds divine), peppers, proscuitto, fruit, veggies, pretty much anything that floats your boat.

For these two fatties I did one identical as above but I forgot the rub. But the other I decided to stuff and use bulk sausage rather than breakfast sausage. I bought a pound of bulk sausage and put it in a mixing bowl. I added minced garlic and onion as well as some black pepper and grated asiago cheese. Then I spread it out on a piece of wax paper and added a couple slices of prosciutto:
Then I added some chunks of blue cheese:
Then I rolled it back up and put it on the platter with the sweet fatty. The stuffed fatty is on the right:
I didn't think there was much difference between bulk sausage and breakfast sausage but the difference it pretty startling. Here are the two fatties resting (along with some baked beans):
The stuffed fatty is on the right again. Uncooked the breakfast fatty was much larger. When cooked it is much smaller and also much darker. The stuffed fatty looks like it is still raw compared to the other but it cooked through. Here are a couple shots of the stuffed fatty sliced:
When stuffing fatties with cheese you really have to pat the hell out of them as if you are pounding out hamburgers. You can't have the meat be loose and have cracks form as the meat firms up as the fat renders out. So, I'm telling you that spanking your sausage is required when stuffing fatties with cheese. I mean really give it a good beating. If not you may have some premature cheese leakage.

Here are two stuffed fatties I made for a buddy's bachelor party (along with ribs and beans). One I spanked harder than the other. Can you see which is which in the upper right?
Here is a close up of those fatties:
When the fatty on the left started oozing I threw a piece of foil under both of them to save the cheese.

Some recommend putting the fatty in the fridge for a while before cooking so that it is easier to manipulate on the grill. I really have not had a problem putting a warm fatty on the grill. As long as it is not touched for the first hour it will firm up enough to be moved without risk of it falling apart.

While I am not a proponent of drug use I am a big fan of smoking fatties so by all means everyone, go smoke some fatties!?!?!

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