Misc Items on the Grill

Here are a few things that we cooked last week on the grill that are worth trying. Corn The corn was cooked in the husk for a while. The husk was then removed. The corn was basted and returned to the grill for a little while longer. This is only one of serveral ways you can grill corn. Another way is to husk and marinade the corn before grilling.

Potatoes This is an awesome recipe for potatoes coming from a man who likes his potatoes any way you want to prepare them as long as they are deep fried.

Onions There is no better onion than one cooked on the grill.

Squash and Tomatoes I am not a fan of either of these items, but my wife and our guests loved them.

The recipes for all of the vegetables in this posting came from the The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue book featured in the side bar.

BIG TIP: My big tip on vegetables is to use a grill friendly wire cage or basket of some sort due to these items being small an more prone to falling through the grill grate. I used the wire baskets that came with my rotissorie cooker. You can also buy a nice basket at your local big box store that comes with a handle making it easier to rotate.

Molasses – Grilled Pork Tenderloin I saved the best for last. The piece of pork in the picture was gone shortly after the flash of the camera. This was some of the best grilled pork I have tasted short of a slow cooked whole hog. The recipe comes from our newest addition to the list of recommended cookbooks found in the side bar titled Southern Living Our Best Easy Weeknight Favorites. This book is out of print, but you can usually find a used one in good condition through Amazon.com.

Grilled Pizza

You are reading the title correctly. Yes, it says grilled pizza and it is out of this world. I have cooked my share of pizzas on numerous part-time jobs since back in high school, and I was a little skeptical going into this dinner. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. The dough is homemade and as good as any pizza dough I have ever eaten. This was my first try at making grilled pizza, but it will not be my last. Mrs. Ozz recommends that you buy mozzarella cheese that is already grated. Other than that, she recommends using only the freshest of ingredients. She did all of the hard preparation work as usual including the dough.

The majority of the ideas for this meal came from The Best Recipe: Grilling and Barbecue book published by Boston Common Press. You will have to buy the book to get the down and dirty details, but here is a sample of what you will get in return.

The DoughThe secret to the dough is a good food processor. We use a Hamilton Beach Food Processor that is fairly heavy on bottom and has those little suction cups to help keep it from walking while working with something like dough that causes a bunch of vibration. This is essential unless you have a stand up mixer sitting around. The book offers several types of dough. We used the 2-hour quick rise for individual pizzas.

The ToppingsWe used canned pizza sauce for convenience on a couple of the pizza, but found that fresh cut tomato chunks worked the best in place of sauce. We used fresh grated mozzarella, parmesan, and Romano cheeses. Don’t skimp on the cheese. Some of them can run as much as $10 or more per pound, but it make a difference. We also cut some fresh basil leaves from our urban herb garden on the back porch. We also included a fw pepperoni slices. The only thing we did not use that I will have next time is some fresh cut onions. Yummy!

Ready for the FireYou need to get your grill heated up and grill one side of the dough first. My recommendation is that you keep an eye on them because the dough can cook a little faster than the book says. You may also need to rotate the pizzas a little to get them cooked evenly over charcoal where the fire might not be quite as consistent as on a gas grill. You can see here below how a door on the front of your grill can help get past this concern with much less hassle.

On the GrillYou may not be able to see it here, but there are aluminum foil pans covering the pizzas. This helps radiate the heat over the toppings while the bottom is browning. I suspect that the toppings would not get cooked and the cheese would not melt soon enough without these pans. Using these pans makes the front door on the grill even more important since you do not want to remove the pans any more than you have to while cooking just to check the pizza bottoms. You can see for this picture that you get a pretty good view of the pizza bottoms from the front door of the grill.

Serving SuggestionsThe recipe book suggests using these as appetizers. I think I might add a salad next time and use this as the main course for some guests. There is a point during the preparation where everyone could actually top their own pizza before finishing the cooking. I think this could make a fun pizza dinner with family and friends in place of your traditional burgers and dogs on the grill.

Preparation TimeAll for plenty of preparation time, especially for the dough. The toppings can take a while as well depending on how fresh you decide to go. The cooking time takes less than 20 minutes total and that includes a break to add toppings after toasting one side of the dough.

Saturday Night Steak for 2.5

All of this comes together fairly quickly and easily. It feeds me, my wife and my 30 month old. Yes, my 30 month old little boy loves his steak. He can put down sirloin or filet at about the same rate I can bite for bite.

The steak is a top sirloin cut a little less than a half of an inch. Is is cooked over a medium hot grill after a little run of your choice. About a third of a stick of butter or margarine is melted over it just before removing it from the grill to add flavor and moisture.

The onions are a must. Plan old yellow onion are cut into slices. The slices are cut into bite size chunks and added to a small foil pan. Approximately a half stick of butter or margarine is cut and placed over the onions. A moderate amount of garlic salt is spread over the top. The foil pan is placed over a medium to hot grill until the onions begin to turn translucent.

These are baking size potatoes sliced using a food processor to desired thickness.A pan with approximately 1/4 inch of vegetable oil is heated to medium high heat. The oil must be up to temperature before adding the potatoes to prevent soggy fries.

Equipment List

I will start my equipment list by introducing a reference book. It helps with more than just picking out equipment, but it does a pretty good job of that too. The book is DK 101 Barbecue by Marlena Spieler. You can purchase it from Amazon.com via the link on the side bar of this page in the Equipment section.

The book recommends several of the following items that I find to be essential when grilling with charcoal. I list them in no particular order with approximate prices. Many of these items can be purchased through ads on this page.

Chimney starter ($12 and up)

Fire starter lighter (less than $5)

Grill cover ($20 and up for large grills)

Dedicated bottle of vegetable oil for grill maintenance and upkeep ($3)

Grill grate cleaning tools ($3 and up)

A dry charcoal (fuel) storage place (under $20)

At least a weekend subscription to local news paper whether your read it or not (less than $2 per week and may provide some useful reading once or twice per year)

An endless supply of cold beverages (Priceless in Hot Humid Charleston, SC)

Not all of the are required, but most will make your job much easier when grilling with charcoal.

The Grill

There is the age old debate over the choice between gas and charcoal grills. If you are a serious about the taste of your food and are not restricted to only using gas then the debate is over because charcoal wins hands down. Gas grills are fine and are better than not grilling at all. I still have my old gas grill and may fire it up from time to time to help get through some big meals. If you are in a apartment that restricts the use of anything but gas then you will not be out of your element here. Now that we have got that over with let’s talk about what drove my choice in grills.

I am not going to endorse a particular grill or brand but I will tell you what I had on my list of features when searching for the perfect charcoal grill. Here they are in no particular order:

Sturdy construction over all

Two separate cooking surfaces for cooking at different temperatures

Adjustable fuel gate that can be adjusted while the grill is hot

Temperature Gauge for each cooking surface

Access door to allow hot coals to be added or removed during cooking with out moving the cooking surface

Removable cooking surfaces for easy cleaning and easy fire starting

Large cooking area for cooking more than just the meat for a meal

Easy access to clean ashes

That’s about it. I was able to find such a grill for under $250 and was able to assemble it in less than an hour one evening after work. You can find other tips on choosing a grill in the books listed in the side bar of this page.

Coming up next are some tips on other equipment that I find to be essential to grilling with charcoal.

It’s Grill’n Time

Welcome to Grill’n Time. You are about to experience some of the best tasting blog postings in Internet history. You will get some pointers on cooking and grilling from our kitchen and back yard. I will share reviews of recipes found in some of my favorite books that I use as well as share a few things that the book might not.

My experience cooking over an open fire dates back to my childhood living on a pig farm. There it was not uncommon for a holiday weekend like this past weekend to be filled with days of preparation to get a whole pig, minus some pieces for the hash ready for a big feast at our little farm in upstate South Carolina. There just outside of Clinton, SC we kept anywhere from 100 to 200 pigs growing for market, home made sausage, and good old fashion pig pickin feast in our back yard. I am not likely to cook a “whole hog” anytime soon, but I do plan to cook my share of the other white meat.

These days I hold residence in a comfortable little suburb community just outside of Charleston, SC. My wife has recently helped me replace my five year old gas grill with a nice new charcoal grill. It was a great father’s day celebration at the Osborne house this year. I was promoted to Grill Sergeant according to the new t-shirt I received.

Join us as we share our experiences here at Grill’n Time.