Since I missed last week, I decided I’d give you two grilling recipes tonight. And a bonus Blueberry Coffeecake (you can substitute any berry).
Pictured at top is Grilled Steak with Spicy Blueberry Sauce – I always get requests for this recipe when I serve it. I use small, wild blueberries, which I can find frozen and it gives it a next level of flavor. I might have one day been able to use my own blueberries, if the ducks hadn’t eaten them. Not the blueberries, the actual blueberry plants. To the ground. This fall I’ll get a couple more on sale and place them where the little feathered vandals can’t reach them.
Grilled Steak with Spicy Blueberry Sauce recipe here.
Next up, one of my most requested grilling recipes, and I’ve included a full menu and shopping list tonight.
A friend of mine spent a few months one summer experimenting with coffee rubs. This was one of my favorites. If you need something fun to do with your next grilled steak, this is a recipe to try. And with my love of blueberries, can’t go wrong with a blueberry coffeecake. Yum.
On the board tonight:
- Steak with Coffee Rub
- Green Beans w/Bacon & Onion
- Baked Potatoes*
- Blueberry CoffeeCake (pictured above and recipe here)
Steak with Coffee Rub
- 3 tbsp chili powder (pure ancho or a blend)
- 3 tbsp finely ground coffee (espresso works best)
- 1 ½ tbsp paprika (use a good one)
- 1 tbsp dark brown sugar
- 2 tsp dry mustard
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp fresh ground pepper
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 to 1-1/2 lb of steak (rib-eye, sirloin, NY strip, etc) in 4 thick pieces
Mix together all spices. Lightly rub each steak with oil and then coat liberally on both sides with coffee rub. Now you can cook in a pre-heated skillet on medium-high heat, about 5 minutes each side for medium-rare. You can broil in the oven, using the second slot down from broiler, for 3-5 minutes each side, again for rare to medium-rare, longer for medium. Or you can grill them outside. Cooking times will vary no matter which style you choose, so watch carefully and you’ll probably have to use a meat thermometer to really judge, because the rub makes it a little harder to eyeball it. Let sit for a few minutes before serving.
Green Beans w/Bacon & Onions
- 1 lb fresh or frozen green beans (if fresh, snap off ends and snap into smaller pieces)
- 2 strips bacon, cut into small pieces
- 4 green onions, chopped
- salt & pepper to taste
Sm. Saucepan, steamer and Skillet
Steam beans until slightly crisp, but tender. While beans are steaming, begin browning bacon until crisp. You can drain most of the bacon drippings, leaving 1 tbsp to lightly coat beans. Add onions. Drain beans and dab with a paper towel. Add to bacon mixture, mixing well, until beans are coated in bacon drippings. Cook on medium-low for 1 to 2 minutes, until onions are heated through.
*I know many people like to wrap their potatoes in foil to “bake” them. Those are steamed in my world. I rub potatoes with olive oil and coat with sea salt before baking. This gives them a crispy, flavorful crust outside and a beautifully fluffy inside.
=====================
Shopping List:
- 3 tbsp chili powder (pure ancho or a blend)
- 3 tbsp finely ground coffee (espresso works best)
- 1 ½ tbsp paprika (a good one)
- 2 tsp dry mustard
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 to 1-1/2 lb of steak
- 1 lb fresh or frozen green beans
- 2 strips bacon
- 4 green onions
- 4 tbsp cultured buttermilk powder or 1 cup buttermilk
- egg
- 8 oz blueberries
Also: brown sugar, butter, flour, vegetable oil, vanilla, salt, baking powder, sugar, fresh ground pepper
That’s it for this week. I’m heading back to see my family, so I don’t know if I’ll have a recipe for next week, but I still have a couple more queued up to share with you.
While I was home this last trip, I realized I have failed my youngest brother. We were at the liquor store buying some whiskey and I was pointing out what I use for cooking, a really good brand, medium price point, excellent for sipping. He shook his head and said, “no just use the cheap stuff, like this.” And he picked up a bottle I’m not sure should even be called whiskey.
I looked at him, aghast. “Never,” I stated adamantly, “use cheap alcohol in cooking.” He rolled his eyes and walked away.
I have failed as a sister.
What’s on your plate tonight? Whatcha got cooking? Any fresh stuff from your gardens? Hit the comments with your ideas, recipes and food thoughts.
JPL
I made a tuna steak on the grill and used Mark Bittman’s recipe. You dry the tuna then brush sesame oil on it and then press it in sesame seeds. I served it with a soy, lime dipping sauce. It was delicious. My son gave me the How to Grill everything cookbook for my birthday and it’s great.
Ken
Cue hollow sardonic laughter.
trollhattan
There used to be a grilling spice that combined coffee, chocolate, paprika, pepper and other spices. Darn good, but I can’t recall the name. Made in SF IIRC.
That grilled heaven on top has me hungry.
TaMara (HFG)
@JPL: That sounds amazing.
Phylllis
My hubbie is a former bartender and will buy the cheap stuff in the blink of an eye. The last bottle of vodka he bought I had to pour out and replace with a bottle of Pinnacle because it might as well have been kerosene. IOW, I feel your pain.
Aleta
Too funny. Thanks, feels good to laugh about something, especially ducks.
Catherine D.
Ha! I only keep sherry, marsala, and vermouth around for cooking (good ones!) and only use wine that I will drink.
ThresherK
Hey, I noticed the blueberry coffeecake calls for powdered buttermilk. I’ve used that before, way in the past, and never knew if I was using it properly.
Can anyone expound on when to add it to dry ingredients (like shown here) v. when to add it to wet ingredients?
JMG
We’re having rotisserie chicken from the grill tonight (Weber sells an attachment that’s perfect for charcoal grills, you just need an outdoor outlet for the turning machine) basted with an olive oil, lemon juice and oregano mix. This is with baba gannouj, Greek salad and pita. Right now, it’s a gin and tonic and cheese sticks.
Van Buren
I bought a blueberry bush for my mom and one for me. She gets scads of berries but I’ve had one berry in 5 years bc the birds get them all first.
CarolPW
@JPL: If you like tuna steaks you might like this recipe: Ginger-wasabe mayo tuna burger
Oh god, it’s my first link I hope I did it right!
ETA: it makes enough as written for an army, but doing the math to make smaller volumes is very worth it. It is a perfect collection of flavors.
ThresherK
@JMG: Wait, isn’t that why Weber sells a Turnspit dog?
trollhattan
@Phylllis:
There’s a LOT of margin in mixed drinks made from generic booze. He must have bartended for a big chain or Moe.
Mary G
I am trying to cook more and am trying a spice rubbed pork loin with honey garlic butter sauce. Wish me luck.
Emma
Wait, why WOULDN’T you use cheap alcohol for cooking? Chinese cooking wine is the cheapest of alcohol, and it makes every dish better. To me, the opposite seems to be the actual sacrilege, using good alcohol for cooking when you could just drink it. And I don’t even drink!
I made Japanese curry with chuck roast, carrots, onion, and leftover bokchoy. People who need easy, filling meals should try it out. (I hesitate to call it a one-pot meal, because I prefer to saute the root vegetables first, then take them out to cook the meat and re-add them much later, but it could definitely be just one pot if you don’t feel like faffing around with bowls.)
Barbara
@Emma: You wouldn’t normally use that much hard liquor in cooking, and the only point of using it at all is to add flavor. So while cheap liquor gets you drunk, if that’s the goal, it doesn’t really enhance food, so you might as well not use it at all. When you use wine, I don’t think you need to use expensive wine so long as it’s wine that you like to drink. Although it is often with some reluctance, many professional chefs will admit that it’s okay to use wine that is too old to drink, if it has good flavor, since you are burning off all the alcohol anyway.
ETA: My vegan daughter is visiting, and we had stir fried eggplant with a soy ginger sauce, and asparagus and tomato salad.
Barbara
@ThresherK: Actually, I doubt if it matters. You can probably add it to the dry ingredients of just about any recipe. I mix it first but I really don’t know why now that I think about it.
Benw
@Van Buren: yep we have 3 blueberry bushes and every year I watch the bloobs get white, and then light blue and the poof. All gone to the birbs
JMG
@Barbara: That sounds great to this carnivore!
Emma
@Barbara: Hmm, I’m not sure I understand your point. Cooking with expensive stuff destroys all the subtle flavors and aroma that you paid big bucks to have in the first place. Adding crappy beer to your chili will yield pretty much the same result as adding the best beer on the market. Adding crappy sake to your gyudon will yield pretty much the same result as adding the best junmai.
Sure Lurkalot
We’re having grilled lamb, a roasted potato and corn salad and a grilled artichoke. We eat very late, usually 8 or later, a habit that started decades ago that hasn’t been shaken in retirement. I’m going out now to grill the corn so I’ll have the salad done in time for a beer and some backyard bird watching.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: I have a pork tenderloin in the freezer, and I have no idea what to do with it. I like cajun seasoning with it on the grill, but alas, no grill.
TaMara (HFG)
@ThresherK: I always whisk it into the dry ingredients and add the water with the wet ingredients. I think of it like baking powder and soda – leavening. But no clue if there is a right or wrong way…
Barbara
@Emma: It depends on how you use it and what it is supposed to add to the meal. TBH, I almost never use hard liquor in cooking, but when I do I definitely do so for flavor. I add rum to chocolate icing in a Queen of Sheba cake, and infuse a pumpkin spice cake with amaretto after it comes out of the oven. I would definitely notice the quality of the added liquor. I find that for many recipes that call for hard liquor it’s more or less affectation and not really essential. IMHO.
WaterGirl
I am making King Arthur Flour’s Chocolate Zucchini Cake for the first time. It’s in the oven now. Not sure I’ll ever make it again unless it’s outstanding.
I have never made zucchini bread or zucchini cake before tonight. I’ll know soon if it was worth it. It surely made a mess of the kitchen.
I used to have a recipe for Sauerkraut chocolate cake the was super moist, and you couldn’t tell there was sauerkraut in it.
I love the King Arthur Flour Favorite Fudge Cake recipe, and it’s a lot less messy to make.
TaMara (HFG)
@Emma: Actually, cooking with liquor reduces it down to a concentrated liquid, which intensifies its flavor. Use cheap liquor, risk bitter, sour or just plain awful taste.
That’s why you can use old wine (i.e. beyond drinking) because it reduces down – where the old wine can taste flat or a little off, I think that’s the alcohol – but burn that off and you get the original flavor back.
And I find the same thing with vinegars and soy sauce – if it calls for a wine vinegar or soy sauce, I usually go for a very good brand. I didn’t understand that, especially for soy sauce, until my friend who is Japanese, schooled me on the difference in her sauces. She uses a premium soy sauce and it shows.
TaMara (HFG)
@WaterGirl: Pork and peach salsa. You can slice it up in medallions, marinate it and fry it up and serve on a bed of rice with peach salsa.
https://whats4dinnersolutions.com/2010/08/21/peach-salsa/
Barbara
@WaterGirl: I think zucchini in baked goods was a desperation move on the part of gardeners with a superabundant output of zucchini, which doesn’t can particularly well. I like it sauteed with corn.
Emma
@WaterGirl: Pork is the basis of a lot of Cantonese soups, like this one, so maybe there’s a way to edit a recipe to use the tenderloin? I also made Cornish pasties with pork one time, so that would work too. (It was a pretty hilarious attempt, though, my pasties ended up the size of my foot.) Adobo or any other stew would be the easiest way to get rid of a whole tenderloin, I think.
TaMara (HFG)
Since we are talking liquor and cooking, I think I’ll add drunken chicken skewers to the recipe rotation. That’s a recipe where it illustrates why good alcohol is essential. Stay tuned…
I have to go make dinner now – my niece has requested blueberry pancakes (we seem to be on a theme tonight – although in my life, blueberries are often on the menu).
Phylllis
@trollhattan: Ha! Dee Ford’s in Columbus GA. Which still has an outpost not too far from Talladega.
Barbara
@WaterGirl: The biggest issue with pork tenderloin is that it is so lean it’s easy to overcook. I think of it like chicken breast. A lot of recipes will add fat back in to keep it tender. I find that a dry rub followed by pan searing works best, and then serving it alongside something like a cherry and red wine reduction sauce. Red wine sauce with peaches, plums or even nectarines would also go well with it.
WaterGirl
@TaMara (HFG): That sounds good! How do you know when it’s done?
I have some of this apricot syrup which I have never used, but their apricot jam is to kill for.
Can you think of anything I can do with that?
TaMara (HFG)
@WaterGirl: Alas, my pork skills are mediocre at best. But fruits and pork always go well together. And it is peach season.
You could also pan fry it and then add spicy apples and let it braise in them for a while.
Emma
@TaMara (HFG): LOL I don’t know anything anymore, what you say goes against everything my family (some of whom are alcohol aficionados) has taught me XD My dad would never dream of using his good wines in cooking, they were there to appreciate either on their own or paired with meals (possibly made with Two Buck Chuck that my mom bought). There’s probably also the element of not wasting food/drink, like you’d better find a way to use crappy alcohol if you spent money on it. Same with Chinese cooking wine, tell any Chinese family that they should be cooking with the good baijiu instead of regular mijiu, and we’ll look at you like your head’s fallen off.
I do have a favorite brand of soy sauce, though it’s not a premium soy sauce. I decided by doing a blind taste-test with 2 other brands, including a premium one. I’m not sure if cooking affects soy sauce the same way it affects alcohol, but I do use soy sauce in pickling as well, so I figured the taste of the soy sauce is more important to me.
Kirk Spencer
Re alcohol – my opinion is that it usually but not always matters. I find it less important when it’s working with so-called alcohol soluble flavors as it’s working as a carrier, not a flavor.
Of course most of the time the flavors and odors of the alcohol matter. So I’ve developed a simple ‘proof’ for the nay-sayers. Feel free to offer to your brother.
Make two dishes of tiramisu, the only difference being the quality of marsala. Offer a blind taste test.
Do not be surprised if he can’t tell the difference. There are those who can’t – and they will never understand why the quality matters. But most people can, and it will teach why the quality of /all/ the ingredients matter, even the booze.
Kirk Spencer
It looks like the prior didn’t post – if it shows up, feel free to delete.
Make two dishes of Tiramisu. One with good marsala, one with the cheapest you can find. Serve as blind taste test. Most people can tell the difference and so learn why good ingredients matter, including the alcohol.
Elizabelle
@TaMara (HFG):
Up for that. Drunken chicken skewers!
Usually with you on “use decent wine/spirits in cooking”, but a friend of mine made this “brandied apricots” recipe with the cheapest Scotch whiskey she could find at the drugstore. (This was California.) Was just dried apricots, demerara sugar, and the scotch; fill a big jar with a lid; marinate it for months and turn it from time to time and — it was divine. Did not taste of scotch, either.
My friend has departed this world, and I hope I can make those apricots well. Maybe it’s as easy as it looked; maybe there’s a trick with proportions. I was just amazed that she could get away with el cheapo Scotch.
NotMax
Did someone say duck?
:)
@WaterGirl
One fervently hopes it was not this one.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Most definitely not that one! shudder
NotMax
@TaMara (HFG)
Jalapeño jelly goes really well as a condiment accompanying slices of pork loin.
JMG
I 100 percent guarantee you that the three-star restaurants of France (and America) use very cheap wine and spirits in their cooking. I’ve been in some of their kitchens.
Pete Mack
Made a new BBQ sauce last night:
3 dry pasilla peppers, seeded.
2 lg cloves garlic, finely chopped
~2t good dijon mustard
~ 2t honey
Ground cumin, black pepper, salt to taste.
simmer peppers in minimal water 15 minutes. Reserve liquid for cooking, if using with pork chops or chicken. Puree or grind peppers til smooth (I used knife and mortar)
Mix in other ingredients. Spread on meat after browning.
Kirk Spencer
huh, guess it is gone. So the other, less important half for me is: If the taste of the alcohol itself is important to the dish use good stuff. If the sole purpose is to unlock the flavors of other ingredients, use the cheap stuff.
Tiramisu, use the good stuff. Bringing out ‘tomato’ in a sauce, or making a marinade that has garlic or basil that I want penetrating the meat, use the cheap stuff. (On the latter, alcohol binds with the fat/oil based flavor elements and carries them into meat the same way a salty brine does, but the alcohol cooks out in the heat. )
WaterGirl
@Kirk Spencer: I found one of your posts in spam, marked it not spam and released it.
Gravenstone
@Phylllis: The saying is don’t cook with it if you wouldn’t drink it. Guess that says something about taste (or the absence thereof).
NotMax
@Gravenstone
Guess that lets out Rippletouille.
:)
Kirk Spencer
@WaterGirl: huh. wonder what triggered that?
Thank you, ma’am
WaterGirl
@Kirk Spencer: I usually look to see if I can figure out what triggered that, but I am so tired tonight that I didn’t even look. I just released it. So sorry!
But you were able to get this one through, so WP no longer considers you a spammer, at least! :-)
Mikeindublin
@WaterGirl:
@WaterGirl: For tenderloin, I always cut it up in about 6 parts, smash them under cling film with a meat hammer to make schnitzel. First dip in a couple beaten eggs mixed with grinded salt/pepper/tarragon/fennel seeds/garlic powder/onion powder/spicy paprika/parsley/chives/thyme then dredge in fine breadcrumbs.
For spices like chives, parsley and thyme I go through the trouble of getting fresh clippings from the garden and put em in the oven till they dry out so I can grind them into a powder with the rest of the spices. I like the fresh spice taste.
i then pan fry em in a 1/4 inch deep on peanut oil.
da best
WaterGirl
@Mikeindublin: I had never heard of schnitzel – well, I had heard the word but had no idea what it was.
I may try that. thanks