The Great Food Junkie Starts 2013 With More Grillin and Chillin!

I know many of you have gone into a deep depression because I haven't written as much lately. It is not because I have become a lazy, no good, sloth, who just lays around all day trying to do as little as possible. However, I'm sure some people think that is one of my life goals. Nope! Trust me when I say there has been a whole lotta cooking going on at the GFJ's house. After all, when you get cooking gadgets for Christmas, you have to try them out. I'll get to those in a bit.

It didn't take long before the GFJ grew tired of all the Christmas food. There is only so much turkey, ham, and assorted sweets a person can handle. So, I went out to the freezer in the garage and started to peruse the shelves. It was only a moment when my eyes landed upon the last of our chuck roasts. Hmmm! Chuck roast sounds good, but I don't really want to break out the slow cooker and have to cut and peel a bunch of potatoes, carrots, and onions. There had to be more to the life of a chuck roast than being stuck in a slow cooker. The poor thing just sat there. Staring at me. A tear fell from its eye.

"Please, Sir," it begged with hands clasped. "Don't let me become another pot roast. I have so much more potential."

How could I, the Great Food Junkie, ignore such pleading. I gently picked up the poor sap, and stroked his packaging with my hand. "Come with me, Chuck!" I exclaimed. "You were meant for much greater things. Together, we can make your dreams come true."

I new what I had to do. I had to figure out some way to grill the chuck roast. After all, what says I love you to a piece of meat like a grill? I found a good marinade recipe that included barbecue sauce, teriyaki sauce, minced garlic, and sliced ginger. I didn't have any teriyaki, so I did the next best thing. I added a little Irish whiskey. I mixed it all up, and poured it over my chuck roast. Then it sat in the fridge for the better part of a day.

However, I knew Chuck couldn't make this journey to greatness alone. He was going to need a faithful sidekick. It had to be something complimentary, but not overpowering. I put my thinking cap on and came up with new potatoes, skewered and grilled, right alongside Chuck. I went to the store and picked up the potatoes, bamboo skewers, and then it hit me. Bacon! These potatoes need to be intertwined with bacon. The wife looked at me and said, "You need to get thick sliced. The other will just fall apart on the grill." This was indeed going to be a glorious day. I had just been given permission to spend money on thick cut bacon.

When we got home, we rubbed the potatoes in olive oil and pink Himalayan salt. Then we skewered them, intertwining them with the thick cut bacon. Then, for added measure, Neve took each skewer and wrapped an additional slice of bacon around the potatoes. However, this presented us with a dilemma. We had a few slices of bacon left...but, not enough to save for another meal. Well! Surely Chuck would need the proper outfit for his adventure to greatness. So Chuck came out of the marinade, got a quick dry off, a rubdown with Santa Maria seasoning, and a nice new set of bacon clothes. Then it was out to the grill!

Chuck and his new friends on an adventure

 Those cool things Chuck and friends are sitting on are called GrillGrates. They are anodized aluminum, and have high ridges. They sit directly on your existing grates, or can be used as replacement grates. The nice thing about them is that the ridges get extra hot, providing excellent searing and grill marks, while the juices drip into the deep spaces between the ridges. The juices sizzle and evaporate, creating more flavor and moisture for the meat, and preventing flare ups. You absolutely must check them out at www.grillgrate.com. They are one of the best improvements you could make to any grill.

After about an hour, Chuck and friends reached the pinnacle of success. I truly believe they achieved a personal nirvana. And I was frickin' hungry!

 It wasn't long before The Great Food Junkie had also reached Nirvana. Chuck was a perfect medium pink in the middle, and his sidekicks, the potatoes and bacon, were spectacular.

Chuck and friends in all of their glory

The adventures with Chuck the roast were just the beginning for the GFJ. If you'll remember, I mentioned a couple Christmas gifts that had to be tried out. The GFJ's wife received a set of tortilla shell pans. You know you've seen the commercials on TV. "Make your own taco salads!" It really is a simple concept. You place burrito size tortillas in these pans, bake for 10-12 minutes, and Presto! You have perfect tortilla shell bowls for a taco salad.

 They don't taste quite as good as the fried shells you get at the restaurant. Can anything really taste better than fried? However, they really are tasty and crispy. In fact, they hold their crisp well enough to fill with chili mac...twice.

The other device was something the wife and I bought each other for Christmas. I saw one of those "does it work" segments on the news, and it featured the Yonana. What is a Yonana? It is a device that takes frozen bananas and other fruits or additives, and makes them into a dessert very similar in texture and taste to soft serve ice cream. If you are wanting a healthy alternative to ice cream, or even if you could care less about the health aspect, and want to try something new, you have to check this thing out. The treats that come from it are spectacular. One of the best things is that it isn't frozen cream. It is frozen banana. That means your ice cream doesn't melt! The pictures below, do not do this thing justice at all. The first was a raspberry, blueberry, and strawberry yonana. It tasted great! However, nothing puts a damper on eating dessert like fighting tons of raspberry seeds. Oh well. The second was a yonana made with a tropical fruit blend of strawberries, mangos, and pineapple. That was an absolute hit. The key is to get your bananas as ripe as you can before freezing. The blacker the peel, the better the banana. This ensures your bananas are providing the maximum sweetness, while not overpowering the dish with their own flavor.

 I think the Great Food Junkie has made up for his lack of communications in this entry. He is going to sign off before your snoring gets too loud for the neighbors. I hope you all have a wonderful new year, and I look forward to all of our 2013 food adventures. Until next time, when the GFJ takes a bite out of Bambi, Goodbye!

The Turkey in the Straw Has Come to Call

Those of you who have just recovered from your heart attacks that were induced by two blog entries in one week, might need to take some preventative measures. Here's the third entry. Two entries ago, I promised a smoked turkey on my new Sawtooth wood pellet grill. It has taken a bit, but here we go. This little write up should remain relatively short in comparison to most of my other ramblings. That's because of the nice little video surprise at the end of the entry. You heard me right! A video! Now, who can say I don't treat my readers right. I must warn you, though. There is some nudity in the video. That's probably going to make you skip the rest of this blathering and head straight there.

If you are a friend of mine on Facebook, or you have read previous blog entries, you know that one of my favorite activities is smoking turkeys. In fact, it has been several years since a turkey has actually graced my oven. In the past, I always smoked my turkeys on a large charcoal grill that had a side fire box. This allows for proper smoking with the indirect heat method. As you may remember from my previous post about smoking a turkey, the skin becomes a dark, almost mahogany, color. This is due to the massive amounts of smoke produced by throwing chunks of hickory in the side fire box. While this produces a turkey with an absolutely mouth watering smoked taste, it also produces a skin that is beautiful to look at, but only palatable to the few with cast iron stomachs, like my son. It is common knowledge that the skin is sacrificed for the flavor in the meat when using this method of smoking.

Wood pellet grills use what I would call a semi-indirect method of smoking. The fire pot is inside the grill, instead of outside. This puts the heat source closer to the meat. However, the drip/flavorizer pan prevents any flames from being able to reach whatever food items are on the grill. Also, instead of wood chunks that burn very slowly, wood pellet grills use...well, wood pellets. These burn at a somewhat faster rate, even on the low "smoke" setting. Therefore, the amount of smoke produced is sufficient for creating that smoked flavor, but nowhere near the amount that is produced in the traditional method. This could be good, or bad, depending on who you ask. Some people absolutely crave that super strong smoked flavor that comes off a traditional smoker. However, some people want a milder smoked flavor, and dearly wish to eat a super crunchy turkey skin. That is what you get with a wood pellet grill; a milder (but definitely present) smoked flavor, and crunchy, yummy, skin.

I usually brine my turkeys. The master BBQers will tell you to never brine a turkey from the supermarket, because it has already been injected with a broth or salt water solution. That may be the case, but they are still as bland a shoe leather. I have never had a brined turkey that turned out too salty. However, I chose a completely different method of keeping my turkey moist this time. I had a bottle of Tony Cachere's Roasted Garlic and Herb marinade. I injected that marinade ALL over the turkey. Wow! I mean, Wow! Between that marinade and the crispy skin on the turkey...I don't know if you could get any closer to heaven without actually being there. The turkey was so juicy. Since it was roasted garlic, the garlic flavor was mild. It was definitely there, but not in an overpowering way. See how I did the wings in the picture above? I learned to tuck them under the bird. This keeps them from flopping, and makes the bird more stable. The cool thing is that all the sugars in the marinade and rub collected at the bottom of the turkey. Those sugars, along with the natural sugars in the skin were in direct contact with the grill, creating a wonderful caramelization. Eating parts of the chicken wing meat and skin was literally like eating candy. I do think it just about got Neva speaking in tongues.

I promised a short blog, and here we are. It's only four paragraphs. Ok! They were long paragraphs. A little about the video below. It is a short "How-to" video on smoking a turkey on a wood pellet grill. It is my first instructional video, so I do realize some of the tips could have been slowed down a bit for those who aren't speed readers. Sorry. This was Christina's first time as a camera man(woman). Some of the footage is slightly out of focus, but I think she did a whizbang job for her first time. Thanks, Christina. I hope you enjoy this.

Enjoy!

Move over, Ruth's Chris. There's a new joint in town!

Anybody who reads my blog regularly, and knows who Ruth's Chris is, is probably wondering what this entry has to do with smoked turkey. It is true that my famous last words were, "Next up, smoked turkey." Okay, they really were "Y'all come back soon!', but I'm hoping you won't mind me taking a little artistic license with what were really the next to last words. I'm also hoping you won't mind this little detour into the land of beef, while we are on the way to turkey.

Anywho! I digress. For those who don't know, Ruth's Chris is a chain of very highfalutin steak houses. It's one of those restaurants where you have to take out a mortgage for a meal that will have you swearing you are sitting at the great banquet table on high. The worst part is that you will feel it was worth every penny...as you tuck yourself into your brand new cardboard box for the night.

We don't eat steak often at our house. It's not that we don't like it. I think my above description of Ruth's Chris pretty much puts that fallacy to rest. There are a few reasons. After years of trying (not too successfully, I might add) to eat healthy, and focus more on poultry, fish, and pork, my stomach has become pretty sensitive to beef. Please don't force me to go into detail. Now, I'm one of the lucky one's who takes one of those daily stomach pills, which also takes care of the sensitivity to beef. The main reason, we don't eat steaks much is price. Once you've been spoiled by the best, you just don't want to go home with one of those scrawny little supermarket steaks. Especially, since even the cheap paper thin steaks cost an arm and a leg...AND I have to buy two family packs because I have a family of four, and the supermarket (whom shall remain nameless...KROGER) thinks every family unit contains three members. Now, if the cheap steaks that are cut so thin that they almost classify as carpaccio, are expensive, just imagine how much the good ones cost!

Like I said. We don't eat steak often at our house. Imagine my surprise when I was walking by the meat clearance section of that nameless supermarket, and I happened upon a pack of four (Not three!!) 11oz ribeye steaks. These things were absolutely gorgeous, and were begging me to take them home. $26 is a lot to spend for one pack of meat, but that really only comes to $6.50 per 11oz steak. You can't get that type of price on a ribeye at your cheap gristle and chicken restaurants. Besides, I had this wonderful new wood pellet grill being delivered that needed to be properly tested. Into the basket the steaks went...after a few minutes of begging with the wife.

This was going to be a good test. One of the chief complaints about wood pellet grills is, while they do an excellent job at low and slow cooking, they just don't get hot enough to provide a proper sear to a steak. What is so important about a sear? On a piece of meat that is going to be cooked at a high temperature, and can quickly lose it's precious juices, searing is needed to basically "cauterize" the wounded flesh. Sounds kinda gross, but that really is what searing does. It cauterizes the meat, and locks in the juices. Anyone who has had the misfortune of eating a dry steak can attest to just how important that is.

One of the reasons I purchased a Sawtooth pellet grill, is because Doug (remember him from my previous post?) promised me it would get hot enough to sear. That means it had to reach a minimum temperature of 450 degrees, preferably 500 degrees or higher. When I was ready to cook, the temp gauge was reading just above 450. I remembered that on a previous test the surface temperature proved to be about 20 degrees hotter that the top of the dome, where the temp gauge is. It is quite possible the grill could have gotten hotter, but I was satisfied with 500. I wanted to sear...not burn.

My first test was to be a grilled summer salad. What!?! You heard me correctly. It is amazing how much the flavor profile of a standard green salad changes when you grill it. I took thick 1/2 inch slices of red onion, brushed them with olive oil, and sprinkled both sides with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. I then placed those onion slices on the grill. After 8-10 minutes, I flipped them over for another 8-10 minutes. I also cut some romaine hearts in half, lengthwise, and brushed the flat surface with olive oil, followed by a sprinkling of kosher salt. During the last two minutes of cooking for the onions, I placed the romaine on the grill, flat side facing down. Two minutes at high heat was just enough to provide a little char on the surface of the lettuce, without completely wilting it.

Take the lettuce and onions, give them a rough chop, mix in some grape tomatoes, then drizzle with a small amount of your favorite salad dressing. Joseph and I like to make dill pickles in the summer. Our favorite dressing is a simple mixture of the leftover pickle juice from a jar of pickles, mixed with enough mayonnaise to just about fill the pint jar. The final grilled summer salad is below. Please excuse the bluriness, I was in lala land, and didn't notice that I still had the camera on manual focus.

Next up...the whole reason for cranking up the grill this night. I had just slathered the steaks in a mixture of oil and butter. The butter adds flavor, and the oil both helps the kosher salt to stick, as well as allowing the surface of the steak to get even hotter. Just before slapping the steaks on the grill, I sprinkled one side liberally with kosher salt. Since kosher salt granules are larger, they don't dissolve in liquid as easily as regular table salt. This ensures little bursts of flavor as you are eating your steak. I honestly feel that a properly salted and peppered steak NEVER needs steak sauce. While you don't want to pour the entire salt mine on the steak, you do want to be liberal with the salt, as much of it will fall off in the grill. I placed the steaks on the grill grates salted side down, then proceeded to salt the other side. I closed the lid, then after two minutes, I turned the steaks a quarter turn, and cooked for another four minutes. I then gently flipped the steaks, and cooked them for another four minutes on the other side. After pulling the steaks off the grill, I placed them in a dish and covered with foil, so they could rest while we ate our salads. When it came time to eat our steaks, all four of us had juicy medium-rare steaks...just the way we like them!.

While eating our steaks, I did make the comment that while seared properly, the grill grates that came with the Sawtooth grill did not produce proper grill marks. I believe the response I got from Joseph was, "Who cares!?! These are good!" I think that's what he said as he continued to stuff meat into his mouth.

Next year I might invest in a set of GrillGrates. These are a set of grill grates that can either rest on top of your current ones, or replace them. They provide the same type of "infrared" grilling that Charbroil is providing on their newer grills. It is supposed to be an excellent way of searing, and providing those beloved grill marks. Then again, maybe not. After all, who can argue with...

"Who cares!?! These are good!"

Soup up your weight loss plan

So...the other day, I was at the doctor. It was my six month checkup. While I did get a license from the doctor to live another six months, one thing became abundantly clear when I stepped on the scales. My efforts to prepare for my role as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Santa Claus were peaking way too early. I definitely needed to slow down on "getting into shape". For those of you who might still be wondering what I am talking about, my "bowl full of jelly" was quickly turning into a 55 gallon drum.

Weight Watchers and I have a relationship that goes back quite a while. Whenever they get a little tight on money, they call me up and say, "Hey, Jim! Why don't you come join us...again!" Well, as much as I admire WW (It really is one of the best ways to lose weight in a healthy manner) I am just having a very hard time getting excited about it. I know that my biggest problem is portion control. Don't get me wrong. I often put the correct portion on my plate. The problem is that the same portion gets put on my second and third plates as well. I am a fast eater. I always have been. The problem with being a fast eater is that one eats way too much before the stomach is able to send the "satisfied" signal to the brain. I like to blame it on the public school system. It seems that the further I went in school, the shorter my lunch period got. After nineteen years of wolfing lunch down, it becomes a habit that is very hard to break. I don't know if that is really the cause of my speed eating, but it does sound like a good excuse. Doesn't it?

This past week two things happened that restarted my weight loss efforts (hopefully, successfully). First, Debbie (my lifetime weight loss partner) brought in a Cooking Light magazine that was chock full of some darn good looking recipes. The second thing was a blog posting I read where the blogger asked his friend how he was successful with his weight loss. The answer was "soup". This person started each meal with a bowl of some type of soup...piping hot. By getting the soup piping hot, he was forced to eat it slowly, allowing his stomach time to fill with water, and send the satisfied signal to the stomach. Thus, he would feel full before he had a chance to eat too much of the entree. Made sense to me. I decided to try some of the Cooking Light recipes, and eat soup first.

I carefully picked out recipes that would be appealing to the whole family. The problem was finding a hot soup that would be appealing, and not be loaded with fat. The other problem with soup, is finding a good hot soup recipe that goes well with summer. I put my thinking cap on. What is one of my favorite soups? I love to get a bowl of wonton soup at the Chinese buffet. It is quite simply a very mild broth with boiled wonton dumplings. I was afraid that might not be too filling, so I tried to think of something that had a little more substance. The end result was Chinese cabbage soup. After some searching, I found a good recipe that I modified considerably, until I had the following.

Chinese Cabbage Soup

Ingredients:
1 Head Chinese Cabbage Chopped (see below for further info.)
1/2 diced onion
1lb ground meat (pork or chicken or turkey)
5 cups chicken broth
5 cups water
2 tsp sesame oil
2 Tbsp lite soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tsp white pepper

Brown ground meet in stock pot. Drain any excess fat.  Saute onions until translucent. Add rice wine vinegar. Add water and chicken broth, and bring to a boil. Add chopped cabbage to the pot, and simmer just until soft (about 3-4 minutes). Add soy sauce, sesame oil, and white pepper, stir well and serve.

Here's a little lesson on Chinese cabbage. There are two different plants often referred to as Chinese cabbage. One is bok choy. The other is napa cabbage. For this recipe, use the napa cabbage. Pay attention to the picture below, as the grocery store will often mix the two up.

Napa Cabbage

I added a couple more items to my cabbage soup, just to bulk it up more, and add some color. I just happened to come across some dried red bell peppers and carrots (That's a whole different story). I added about half a cup of each to the soup when I initially allowed it to start coming to a boil. The result ended up being a soup that was very light, but definitely filling.

Chinese Cabbage Soup

I decided to mix continents for the meal. The entree came from Italy, by way of Cooking Light.  We had Shrimp Pasta Florentine. I don't know the exact legalities of posting recipes from publications, so I won't post it here. However, just click on the name of the dish above, and you will go to the website.

That looks good. Doesn't it? I didn't take the picture. That is taken from the Cooking Light website. My dish didn't come out quite that pretty, but it was close. About the only change I made was using Angel Hair pasta instead of fettuccine. I only went that route because I like to get the pasta that tastes like regular, but has added fiber. The particular brand I was looking at did not have fettuccine.

So. I suppose you're wondering how things went. I can say that both recipes were resounding successes on the taste size. As for the hot soup helping to control my appetite, well........

It worked. I wasn't sure I could even down my one portion of shrimp and pasta. Of course, I did. I was NOT going to let that shrimp go to waste, unless it was my own!

I'll keep you informed if this souped up weight loss plan works.