From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
I have a four day weekend and most of it is supposed to be wild and windy weather, so grilling will most likely have to wait. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have grilling recipes. These all seem to be favorites based on comments, views and requests.
First up, the basics of grilling a good steak are here.
Next is one of my most requested recipes in the summer, Steak with Coffee Rub (click here). There is an entire dinner menu and shopping list at the link.
There are nine different hamburger recipes here, including Stuffed Burgers (pictured above) and veggie Black Bean Cheddar Burgers.
And finally, a few grilled chicken recipes, including Sunrise Chicken and Fruit Juice Marinated Chicken are at this link.
What’s on your menu for the weekend? Staying home or hitting the road? What are some of your favorite grilling recipes? Hit the comments and share. Be safe this holiday weekend, and don’t forget to thank a vet.
Tonight’s featured recipe is one of my favorites, because, well, blueberries!
Grilled Sirloin with Spicy Blueberry Sauce2 cups frozen wild blueberries (unsweetened)
1/4 cup sugar + 1 tbsp
2 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 to 1 tsp red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you want it)
pinch of chili powder
1 lb Sirloin, cut into 4 pieces
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Saucepan and small bowlRun still frozen blueberries through a food processor until finely chopped. Add all ingredients to a small saucepan on low heat until the blueberries melt and give you enough water to bring to a boil without scorching. Boil for 1 minute or so, stirring constantly until liquid is reduced by half. Let simmer on low, stirring occasionally, while you prepare the rest of dinner.
Broil or grill sirloin until cooked according to your preference, if you can, sear the outside so it’s really crispy on the outside. It works well if you coat the steak with lots of ground pepper on the outside as well. Once the sirloin is done, place two tablespoons of blueberry sauce on the plate, place steak on the sauce then top with more sauce. Place remaining sauce in a small bowl and serve with meal. Goes great with garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed zucchini.
That’s it for this week. If you missed it, I did post the Blueberry Upside Down Cake photos and recipe here. Later this weekend, I will finally have my gadget review for my robot “butler”. Have a great holiday weekend – TaMara
Elmo
The secret to a perfect inch-thick ribeye:
Get the grill absolutely as hot as it will possibly get. 600 if you can manage it.
Steak on. Count to 90.
Flip.
Count to 90.
Turn off the grill and make sure it’s covered.
Let sit in the covered grill for 2.5 minutes. Remove.
If you let it cook any longer than that, you have committed an abomination unto The Lord of Cows and you have disrespected the meat.
raven
no link on the chicken
geg6
I only have to bring a side dish to the family picnic on Monday, so I’m going use up some of the bumper crop of asparagus we have for the dish. It’s a barley and roasted asparagus salad with mushrooms and lots of fresh herbs with a Dijon vinaigrette. I can’t believe the harvest of asparagus we got this year. We’ve had some every night for dinner for at least two weeks and I still have several bags of stalks in the fridge. And nothing, absolutely nothing, tastes as delicious, tender and simply melt-in-your-mouth as fresh asparagus.
Anne Laurie
@raven: Fixed, thanks!
Anne Laurie
@geg6:
Now I wanna show up at your house for the weekend!
geg6
@Anne Laurie:
Come on down! I’ll send you back to Massachusetts with a big bag full of asparagus. It’s my favorite, but there’s no way we’re going to be able to eat all of this. We never expected to have this big a harvest, especially with the cold this winter. Our producing plants are several years into production and they don’t usually produce this prolifically for this long. We planted six new plants last year, thinking our current ones were probably close to played out. Apparently not.
Anyway, it will go over well at the party on Monday. All the sisters and their daughters are asparagus addicts. In fact, you should come down and hang with the sisters. You’d enjoy us. Four of us, all different but all the same. Our patient and sweet men. My awesome nieces. Even John’s daughter, who discovered at Thanksgiving that she loves my family. Good food, good wine and fun, smart and good hearted arguments (the same ones we’ve been having since I was born 55 years ago). I’m #3 out of the four of us and we have the best parties.
raven
Try this recipe for Versailles garlic chicken marinated in sour orange. Stone killer.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@geg6: Aren’t sisters the best? I have four of them, and yes, we have the best parties and the most fun. (And sometimes, even now in our declining years, the biggest battles.)
billB
happy you folks eat well, remember a lot of us can only dream of food like that while we eat rice and beans 365
some guy
we use a variation of that Citrus marinade, using OJ instead of grape, and half the soy sauce , twice the wine. plus, lots of garlic.
the neighborhood is gonna do a big ole bbq on Sunday, 3 families, 9 kids, burgers, chickens, and grilled veggies too. and lots of potato salad
Yatsuno
@geg6: Would you ship if I paid the costs? Seriously? Ten pounds would be lovely, thanks!
raven
@billB: You using the internet at the library?
NotMax
If a steak requires a rub or anything other than the most basic of seasoning (pepper, maybe salt, perhaps a dash of Worcestershire if feeling adventurous), then it is a pretty piss-poor excuse for a steak.
/rant
rikyrah
nothing better than a big delicious hamburger with cheese on the inside.
goddamn!!
clogs the arteries, but it’s worth it…LOL
some guy
@NotMax:
balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and garlic make NY Strip steaks yummy-ier. some people like the gravy
chopper
made some Hearst ranch sirloin tonight but thin-sliced in homemade pho. good fucking meat. may go back to the store for something to grill up this weekend.
chopper
@NotMax:
I like using paprika mostly because it burns like a motherfucker. great for quick browning so you can finish it off low n slow.
NotMax
@some guy
Gilding the lily.
If it is a good cut of beef, it stands on its own. Masking a mediocre piece or cut is something else again.
NotMax
@some guy
Fully realize that taste is subjective, but I am a lifetime member of the school which believes that balsamic vinegar is disgusting and best reserved for use as a drain cleaner.
some guy
@NotMax:
I hear you, and agree 99%, but some gal likes her balsamic/olive/garlic NY Strips, and the local tends to have choice, not prime, so there is that.
and for top/bottom round, there is just not enough fat to grille without something something. don’t get me started on so-called “London Broil.”
Leg of Lamb, now there is a meat that demands yogurt and lemon marinade.
some guy
a nice Ribeye cut needs nothing but a salt-n-peppa rub. will not desecrate with anything else
NotMax
@some guy
London Broil can come out nicely tasty when done au poivre. Although agree that what the markets sell nowadays as London Broil is trimmed beyond reason – a brush with just a little melted butter before broiling helps ameliorate that infraction.
Try honey-mustard-rosemary on leg of lamb sometime. And piercing the meat in order to insert slivers of fresh garlic is a must.
? Martin
I bring the steak to room temperature and then freeze it for about 30 minutes. I put a light dusting of corn starch on as well, on top of coarse pepper and kosher salt. The idea is that any moisture on the outside of the steak, either initially or from juices, prevents the maillard reaction from working properly to achieve caramelization and some pyrolysis. By freezing it and applying a bit of corn starch (not much), you give the steak a dry surface for that reaction to happen quickly early on, and you can get a nice heavy crust. The challenge is that you need to get enough heat in the center so it’s not completely raw, so a few minutes of indirect heat is needed.
But as much heat as you can manage. I get my grill up north of 700 degrees, but a lot of gas grills don’t go that high. Charcoal does it without much trouble. Pan frying works better than grill snobs will admit.
But rest the steak for a good 10 minutes. The high heat drives the juices to the center of the steak and dries out the outside. Resting lets it all come back into balance.
? Martin
@some guy: A little butter on top while it rests… a little dairy makes everything better.
Violet
Picked a bunch of blackberries tonight and had them for dessert. Some leftover but more will be ready tomorrow. Also had green beans fresh picked. Tomatoes are ripening all over. I think I have eight different varieties–maybe more–so I’ve got more tomatoes than I can handle. Giving them away at this point.
? Martin
@NotMax: Well, the main problem is that London Broil isn’t a thing, it’s a process. Bottom rounds vary in terms of how they’re trimmed, and in some places a London Broil is a flank steak or a top round, so who the fuck knows what they’ve put that label on.
One of the better California inventions is the tri-tip (bottom sirloin). Nice size cut, good amount of fat, tasty.
SectionH
@raven: Thanks for that link! “Verr-sigh-yez” is an old favorite of ours when we’re in the area.
Fred
@Anne Laurie
Black Bean Cheddar Burgers sounds great. So I looked for the recipe, at the link and didn’t see it. Is there some sub-link or sumpthin’ I’m a missin’?
My wife and I have not had red meat since our vegetarian son visited last fall (well, my step son but I wish I could take credit for him). The frozen vegi-burgers and ground vegi from the super market tastes great and is convenient but I want to start expanding my horizons. Pre-fab always has stuff we don’t want like too much salt.
I’m really surprised that I don’t miss the meat at all.
@billB
Rice and beans 365 is a bit much but gosh you can do some great stuff with a pot of rice and beans.
Basmati Rice with Black and Red Beans: Saute some chopped onion, celery, green pepper and a hand full of frozen yellow corn in olive oil. Add a little ground beef for texture and taste if you like. Add a lot of sliced garlic cloves for a quick turn in the hot oil. Dump in the right measure of water for the amount of rice you’re fixin’ with a bit extra as the beans will soak up some. Dump in some crushed chili, cumin, oregano, basil and salt. Bring to boil, add a buncha beans, lower to simmer and cover. Cook until beans are tender, Raise heat to boil, stir in pre-soaked rice, reduce heat to low simmer, cover and cook according to directions on rice package. When time is up set aside (still under lid, don’t peek) for five minutes. Fluff with a fork and serve.
Even my “I hate beans” step son likes it. Never heard a complaint. It’s quick, easy and an award winning chef informs me that the cumin will prevent the bean farts. Mostly.
Eating beans and rice together, I am told provides complex proteins and so can replace meat in a healthy diet. Healthy for us and the planet*.
*Re-reading this I notice I sound like some wag on a PBS sunday afternoon cooking show. I better go start my chain saw and drink a beer. Real Men can cut wood while drinking beer, ya know. “I’m a lumber jack an’ I’m OK. I sleep all night and I work all day. I like to wear….”
TaMara (BHF)
@Fred: It was buried on page two of the recipes at the link. Here’s the direct link: Black Bean Burgers.
Sorry about that….
Lfv
Steaks should be reverse seared. That is, medium temp to cook and then move to very high temp to finish and get a nice crust.
billB
enjoy rich folk
the millions of us po’folk will sit home with our rice
and picture your fancy food.