Who needs Baked Beans when you can have Grilled Beans!!

Baked beans have been a standard staple in terms of a side dish for BBQ seemingly forever. But why settle for baked beans? The grill is already up and running, why not use it to take baked beans to the next level. Why not impart some of that amazing smoky flavor that we so desire permeating the meat into the beans? There are a million ways to do grilled beans. This is just one of them. This is the simplest side dish. The prep time was all of 10 minutes and made a great side dish for a group of 20.


Let's start off with the ingredients. Here we have three large cans of Bush's Original Baked Beans. You can use anything here. There will be so many more flavors added that I don't bother buying something other than the original as the added flavors will overpower any specialized beans. Along with the beans there is garlic, olive oil, brown sugar, maple bacon and apple pie stuffing. That's right. Apple pie stuffing. Bear with me:

If I'm doing these for say 4 or 6 I would pick a pot with a metal handle and do all the prep in the pot and transfer it straight to the grill. But with 20 people coming over I needed something bigger to go on the grill. What I did in this pot on the stove was transferred to a double stack of a good size disposable tin tray. First things first. Throw in a little olive oil and garlic into a pot and get that garlic sweating over medium heat:

Add about a half cup of brown sugar and more olive oil as the sugar just soaked it up:

While the garlic is sauteing, as well as the sugar, chop up the apple pie stuffing into smaller chunks.

Then add the chunks to the pot to cook them down a bit:

While this is simmering I dumped the contents of the cans of beans into the disposable trays. I doubled them up to give the beans more support. After the garlic, brown sugar, apple concoction had simmered for a few minutes, I dumped them into the pan with the beans along with a healthy dose of fresh cracked black pepper and mixed it all through:

At this point I pulled out a few slices of maple bacon and sliced into one inch squares. You won't need the whole pound. This is a healthy version of the other things I normally prepare with bacon!!

I placed the bacon squares along the top of the beans but left a little space between each one so they wouldn't insulate each other and thus cook more quickly:

Depending on how much time you have you can place these directly over the heat or off to the side to slow cook. When I do ribs for say 6 hours I put them off to the side for 5 hours or so. We didn't have that kind of time so 2.5 hours on direct heat will have to do. Here are the beans next to the ribs with the Bologna Chub in the background:

Here are the beans simmering on the grill about 90 minutes later. The bacon is cooking nicely and the whole dish could be eaten at this point. But the longer they stay on the more flavors infuse into the beans:

And here are the beans ready to serve. The reason I don't use whole strips of bacon is because when they are ready to serve I just stir the bacon into the beans.


Now I will admit that I had never tried the apple pie stuffing in beans before. Normally I make this recipe exactly the same but without the stuffing. Sometimes I mince up some sweet onion, but this is usually my recipe. I had seen the apple pie stuffing on a couple of sites and decided to try it.

After the food was served and everyone was well on in tearing into their respective plates I asked the crowd for feedback. After a bit of goading I finally got a little more than, "everything is great." I had to assure them that they would not insult their hosts by giving constructive feedback. I was worried that it would be too sweet but I didn't get much of that. Even had a suggestion to add molasses next time. A couple people felt that it needed more salt. I figured the salt in the bacon would have taken care of that but maybe I need to add a pinch of salt next time. A couple people thought they were a bit thin. With a shorter cooking time the beans did not cook down as much as my usual beans do. I could've poured off a little of the sauce prior to cooking next time if I don't have as much time like I did here. So plan accordingly on that front.


What I would do differently next time:

1. Add a little salt. With a pan this big a pinch or two would do the trick
   
2. If I only have a couple hours of cooking time I would open the cans halfway with the can opener and pour a little of the sauce off the top using the top of the half opened can as a sieve so I don't lose any beans. If I have more than a couple hours then I skip this step and just let it cook down normally
   

Click here for the rest of the process

How the GrillinFool celebrated the Super Bowl - Part I - Bacon Explosion

Oh, what a joyous day. I love the Super Bowl. I love the culmination of the NFL season. I love the commercials. I love that it is practically a holiday that everyone gets together for. And most of all I love the food. And this year we may have gone a little overboard. If you are a health nut, this is not the place to be.

Here is the main event. This thing is all the rage right now so we decided to give it a try. What's not to love? Bacon wrapped sausage wrapped bacon? It's a cardiologist's dream. And what a perfect time to try one of these monsters - Super Bowl Sunday?


We started with two pounds of Italian Sausage, a pound of thick cut bacon (formed into a weave), a half pound of cooked bacon, a half shallot, some garlic, black pepper, some KC sweet and smoky rub (courtesy of Mr. Raichlen), BBQ sauce, some cheddar and provel cheese.


Mix up the sausage, garlic, shallots, black pepper in a bowl:

Then spread the meat out flat on a piece of wax paper. Here we have the rub applied to the sausage:

Then layer the bacon:


Add some roped provel:

Add some sharp cheddar:


Drizzle on some BBQ sauce of your preference:


You will notice that I did not apply the stuffing ingredients all the way to the edges. This is so the stuffing can be sealed within the fatty.

Since this has cheese in it it really needed to be smacked around pretty hard to make sure there are no cracks and crevices. My dad was having a hard time grasping the concept behind why we need to smack the crap out of the sausage so my mom stepped in to help out.

Once the sausage was thoroughly assaulted time to wrap it in the bacon weave that my dad prepared earlier:

There is no easy way to do this. I just picked up the far side of the bacon weave and pulled it over the top of the fatty and voila, we have a bacon wrapped sausage wrapped bacon. Looks great from this side:

From this side we need a little work:


A few toothpicks later and that bad dog was wrapped well:

Off to the grill. Going for indirect here and some good smoke action. My dad does not have a dedicated smoker but he does have a couple of grills that will suffice. For this job we went with the 20 year old Char-Broil. So how do we turn this grill into a smoker:



Coals on each side, a make shift drip pan made of tin foil and a chunk of cherry on each side. Instant smoker:


And then we have the Bacon Explosion on the grill:


About an hour in we have this:


Two hours in:


It is starting to look and smell really good right now. So much so we started attracting a crowd:


Hmmmm....Future entry on GrillinFool.com? I've got a rotisserie just waiting for one of those guys. That will have to wait for another time. Back to the grilling. Here we have the GrillinFool tending to the Fatty and some ABT's:

Three hours in:

Another 30-40 minutes later:

And here we have the Fatty on the board to rest:


Remove the toothpicks, add some foil:

15 minutes later, time to slice:


How about a closeup of that smoke ring with a different flash setting:



I gotta be honest here, this thing was good, but wasn't all that. The bacon on the outside was amazing but the rest of it was sorta, well, meh. With all the hype I just expected to be blown away. I wasn't. Not by a long shot. Here's what I would've done differently:

1. The Italian sausage was a little overpowering. Probably should've gone with some generic bulk sausage rather than the Italian.
2. It needed more cheese.

Will I try this again? Yes. With a different kind of sausage and more cheese I expect it to be better, but I still don't think it will live up to the hype. I do plan on doing the bacon weave around a pork tenderloin in the near future. This thing is a lot of work for something that just wasn't all that great.

Click here for the rest of the process

How the GrillinFool celebrated the Super Bowl - Part III - Atomic Buffalo Turds

And finally we have the Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABT's). Don't let the name scare you. These things are incredible. A jalepeno stuffed with cream cheese a little smoky and wrapped with a half a slice of bacon. And for those of you that think this will be way to hot trust me they aren't as hot as it would seem. Certain things need to be done to minimize the heat. To see how to minimuze the heat click on the link below to see...


All you need for ABT's are peppers, little smokies, cream cheese and bacon as you can see below. I used two kinds of peppers. Standard Jalepeno's and whatever those little red ones were which I think were just baby red bell peppers.


The process is simple. Slice the peppers lengthwise leaving the stem which will make a great handle when they are cooked. Then scoop out the seeds and white flesh. I used a melon baller for this. If you want to make them hotter leave the white flesh and seeds. The white part and the seeds inside the jalepeno is where the year really comes from. If the outer part is cooked enough it won't pack much heat.

Once the peppers are halved and scooped spoon in a little cream cheese. I left the cream cheese out on the counter for about an hour to soften up and make this part of the process easier. Add a little smoky to each half pepper, wrap with a half slice of bacon and stick a toothpick into the bacon and the smoky to keep everything in place. Here is the process in the picture below from left to right:


Here is a platter full of ABT's that are ready to go on the grill:

These guys went onto the same grill that had the Bacon Explosion on it. They take about 45 minutes to smoke at around 250. The real timer though is the bacon. When it looks done the ABT's are done. The Fatty had been on about 2 hours at this point so I wanted to get my ABT's on right away. I put on half of them here. I added the other half about 20 minutes later:


Here we have the second batch. They have been on for about 20 minutes:


Here we have both the Bacon Explosion and the second batch of ABT's ready to come off the grill. I think I left these guys on about an hour while I socialized and played with my son:


And finally the ABT's on a plate and ready to eat. Be careful that cream cheese is like lava when they first come off the grill. While they cooled I got a couple of shots for this site:



Click here for the rest of the process

One of my first photo shoots

I found a file with some old pics on a my desktop at home last night. This is one of the first times I decided to document the process with a camera. I'm guessing this may have been 3 summers ago because I was incredibly proud of my Kershaw Shun Knives that got as engagement and wedding gifts. This is another Garlic stuffed Pork loin, but with a few twists. First I cooked an appetizer with this and second I basted the loin throughout the process with bacon as seen above....Mmmmmm....Bacon.....


One thing I have noticed from these pics is that I have come a long way since then in both grilling and photography!?!?

First the shrimp. I took U8-12 shrimp from the local grocer that were already deveined and removed the shell but left the tail. I did these two ways. The first way I wrapped a large basil leaf around the midsection of the shrimp. Then I wrapped a half piece of bacon around the basil and secured it with a toothpick.

The second I did with Rosemary. In this case I took a short sprig of rosemary and put it in the valley created by the deveining process and then wrapped in bacon as I did with the basil shrimps. A little cracked black pepper is all it needs after that.

Here is a bowl of the shrimps ready for the grill:


Then the loin. As I did before with the garlic stuffed loin I cut slits into the loin and inserted slivers of garlic. I'm guessing I did some sort of marinade considering the color of the meat when raw. The marinade was likely worcestershire, garlic, black pepper and maybe some red wine.

I had yet to buy my Charcoal baskets that keep the coals on each side so this is a quasi indirect/smoking session on a standard 22 inch weber. In this case I seared the loin a bit over the coals before pulling it over to the side with no coals to indirect and smoke:


Here you can see the coals on one side and none on the other:


And after a bit, I rotate to get a bit of a sear all the way around the loin:


Then I pulled the loin to the other side of the grill and added some soaked wood chips and small chunks. Here is where I have grown as a pit master. I never use chips anymore or those tiny chunks as they burn up way too quickly.


And now it's time to make sure that loin will be juicy when I pull it off:


Evidently I got a little hungry and decided to throw a couple shrimp on the ole barby to enjoy during the process. Notice the bacon browning on the loin. How good does that look?


Once the shrimp is firm and the bacon looks done they are ready to eat:


Here's a rookie mistake with the bacon used to baste. The first three half slices were running out of fat to render out onto the loin, so instead of pulling those three slices off and eating them, I put three more slices on top of them. Learn from my mistake here. Don't let perfectly cooked bacon go to waste like I did:


I have no idea how far along in the process this is, but I'm guessing I was about to pull the loin off at this point. How does that bacon look now?


And here we have the loin resting and me proudly displaying my badass cutlery yet again:


Here are a couple of slices. You can see the bits of garlic if you look close:


How things have changed. First, I don't show off my knives as much. My pictures are clearer than these. I know not to waste bacon. I don't use wood chips anymore. That was the summer of 2006. A lot can change in 3 short year...

Click here for the rest of the process