Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Cookin'on the Grill!

O yeah, it's that time of the year again! One of my favorite summer activities, cooking on the grill. Weather it's chicken, burgers, steak, ribs, brats or hot dogs. "You kill it, I grill it" is my motto when I have the tongs in one hand and a beer in other.

This year I downsized my big assed gas grill in favor of a small charcoal grill that I had stashed for years. I know that gas grills faster to cook on and cheaper in the long run, I prefer the taste of the charcoal flavoring over the propane taste. On top of that, it gives me an opportunity to pull out my boom box to listen to some killer CD's and ENJOY a couple of cold brews while the flames are roasting the meat.

One of my favorite recipes is honey and spice chicken wings. It's rather easy to cook...

Ingredients:

1/2 c Heinz 57 sauce
1/4 c honey
2 lbs chicken wings

What I do is boil the chicken till fully cooked. While that is going, I'll combine the Heinz 57 sauce and the honey in a large freezer bag. Once the chicken is done, I'll put the chicken of the freezer bag with the sauce to marinate overnight. Sounds easy, eh? What's your favorite grilling recipe?

5 comments:

HLiza said...

We do use honey and the Heinz sauce but I've never boiled the chicken first. What difference does it make to the taste if you do that? Just last weekend we were thinking of doing a BBQ party one day for the extended family during the holiday.

Tender Heart Bear said...

My favorite is my BBQ ribs. The ribs are the boneless country ribs.

Get a package of ribs and put in the slow cooker all day long. Then take them out put it on the grill and put my own type of BBQ sauce on them.

BBQ sauce-

Some BBQ sauce any kind you have.
Sugar
Vanilla extract
mix it until it is sweet.

My mom loves this sauce. I had to make it this way for my ex husband. He couldn't have spicey food. I don't know how much I put in to the sauce. I always just added what I thought.

Perplexio said...

When I cook meat on the grill I tend to "share" my beer with the meat (to help keep it moist).

I also enjoy cooking corn on the cob on the grill. We normally husk it, lay out a sheet of foil, butter the corn, season it with one of our special seasoning blends (from www.penzeys.com, I believe they're a Wisconsin based company actually. I normally use either the Northwoods seasoning or the Arizona Dreamin' blend) or an Adirondack spice blend we brought back from our vacation last year (Bear Rub). Then we wrap the foil around the corn and cook it on the grill on medium heat for about 30 minutes, rotating about every 10 minutes.

For chicken I normally do a dry rub of one of those same seasoning blends from Penzey's and then let it marinate in barbecue sauce or an oil based salad dressing (usually Italian but sometime Caesars or Balsalmic vinagrette).

Another favorite-- Portabello mushrooms. I normally slice the whole mushroom heads into burger size and marinate overnight in balsalmic vinegar. Then I either gently brush olive oil on them or spray down the grill so they don't stick and cook them like burgers (although for much less time, about 2-3 minutes each side) on low-medium heat. We sometimes add cheese (I prefer swiss, my wife prefers provolonse or mozarella slices). The bits I cut off the mushroom caps to get them down to burger size we set aside for our salad or store for a stir fry on another evening.

drewzepmeister said...

There is no difference in the taste, HLiza. I tend to boil the chicken beforehand to make sure the chicken get thoroughly cooked. That way, I can reduce the risk of salmonella from eating raw meat.

I just LOVE Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, Tender Heart. Given the recipe you described, it might just kick it up a notch...

The seasonings sound delicious, Perplexo! I'm gonna have to try them!

Perplexio said...

Drew I checked Penzey's website and noticed most of their locations in Wisconsin are in the Milwaukee area (Brookfield, Waukarusa, Waukesha, and Milwaukee itself). No locations in Racine yet but who knows, that may change. My wife & I go to their store in Naperville, IL.