Here’s a couple griddle cooks from the last two days. First is a bbq pulled pork pizza made with naan which was simple and very good. The recipe came from a book my kids got me for Father’s Day.
Yesterday was pork chops, asparagus and potatoes two ways, cut up and smashed, both in duck fat. The smashed taters in duck fat was the star of the show and have already been requested again.
Bronco Pro Barrel Smoker
PBC
Pit Boss 757GD Griddle (2)
Blaz'n Grill Works Grid Iron
Weber Genesis E-310
Original Original Grilla
Smokey Joe® Charcoal Grill 14"
Fireboard 1
Thermoworks ThermoPop
Thermoworks Thermapen Mk4
Thermoworks Smoke Thermometer with gateway
2 iGrillminis - from before they were Weber.
My wife requested pizza today so pizza it was. I think I'm getting the hang of sourdough crust, she said this was one of the best crusts I've ever made, and I've been making pizza crust for at least forty years. Her half was spinach, roma tomato, turkey and non dairy cheese. Mine was whatever toppings we saved the last time we had pizza, sausage and red peppers for sure, with mozzarella cheese. Just a coating of olive oil on the crust, no sauce. 500 degrees for about 10 minutes.
I made pickle dip as part of a meal earlier this week and had lots of leftover burgers. I had the brilliant idea to put the pickle dip on the burger and nothing has ever been tastier. Especially on a rainy Saturday.
This is quite good. In fact, it tastes exactly like something you'd get from Panda Express....rich, sweet, salty, you know the taste.
First, I charred up some shishito peppers as Aaron did in the video.
I then made the sauce which is a mixture of soy sauce, honey, sugar, oyster sauce, miran, chicken bouillon, and cornstarch. This makes about 1/2 cup, to which you then add 1/2 cup water to thin it out. Aaron also suggest adding a minced pepperoncini, which I thought was weird, but I did it anyway.
To get the chicken going, you take some boneless chicken thighs, season with salt and pepper, and then dredge in cornstarch. You then pan fry them until golden brown / 165 F. I have never understood this, but it always takes me far longer to pan fry than any recipe suggests. I think it's because I only have access to "Texas-sized" chickens. (Indeed, Aaron's nine thighs weighed 1.3 lbs; mine were nearly 5.)
As even my 12" cast iron skillet was too small, I did them in batches. (You can see the probe of my Thermapen off to the right.)
Once there are done, let the skillet cool down a bit and replace any oil if needed. Now fry an obscene amount of garlic, and a significant amount of the white parts of green onions and some ginger. After about 30 seconds or so, pour in the aforementioned sauce, and let it boil for about 3 minutes.
Then add the chicken back in, flipping after about a minute or so.
Then plate up over rice, spoon some of the sauce on top, and garnish with the shishitos.
As I said, it is quite good: basically sweet/salty-garlic-glazed panfried chicken. And it goes incredibly well with the white basmati rice I used. Now the peppers....meh. As far as I can tell, they are Japanese "green peppers," very little flavor and no spice what-so-ever. They do look cool though.
Seared about 4 min per side to lock in the juices, then flipping as needed until reaching the color and char I wanted. Pulled and rested on top of chimichurri compound butter. Sliced and tossed in the board sauce before serving with sautéed mushrooms & herb baby potatoes! ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS! Perfect for a Saturday night feast! 🥩 🥔 🍄
home tonight! And the wonderful misses had a great home cooked meal ready when we got home. She even used two of my CI skillets! A first for her! And it was so good!
An experiment with the MAK super smoker box, it went wrong from the start when my new frogmats didn't come in yet, so I used foil with slits for the smaller pieces. The ones that went straight on the grate turned out much better faster, the foil ones ended up needing a 1 hour ride in the convection oven at 170.
End result is ok, but I will try one more time with frog mats. I think the perfect result might be 3-4 hours in the SSB sub 150 with a short finish in the oven. The smoke does work with these flavors, though if using pineapple juice again I may add some heat and salt next time.
I was going to log this cook but a (luckily fixable) malfunction happened with my Fireboard thermocouple probe.
HawkerXPSammyJ I truly appreciate it, but in this case the hold down screw just was loose, popped the wire back in and tightened things back down and it's working fine. This is a pretty big flaw on these Fireboard K Probes and far from the first time it's happened to me. Hopefully in the future they solder and/or glue like the other expensive options on the market.
You're not going to want to solder a Thermocouple connection. The solder will mess with the readings. The wires are a pain to get tight, especially since the T/C wire is chromel/alumel and are harder than copper or aluminum. But, you really just need to crank down on the screws to get them tight (and get the right sized screwdriver). Make sure the strain relief is in the plug properly.
Type K thermocouples (in the US) have the red as the negative lead, which confuses a fair amount of folks.
Inaugural cook in my Father’s Day get, a Steelmade griddle insert for my Genesis. Hoping to use it yesterday but it took about an hour to come to temp and we didn’t have time. So last night I removed the flavorizer bars which cut that time in half. My son really wanted a griddle because he likes cooking breakfast.
The verdict? Food was good but he rated the griddle a 5 out of 10. I don’t disagree actually. From time the grill went on until when we ate was almost an hour. The quality of the steel is nice but it’s too small, the angled side walls are also too small and it doesn’t hold its temp consistently. The pancakes that fell apart were the ones in the back. He’s ready to move on with it 😜 but I told him we’re going to keep it for now and learn how to use it. I’m sure there’s user error as well.
Brentwood is pretty famous (at least here in the Bay Area) for having great corn. Not really the reason we moved here, but it didn't hurt! I assume in SoCal it would show up if you look for it. According to the locals, this year's corn will be pretty late so I was actually surprised to see it at the farmer's market yesterday. We used to get it in when we lived Danville/San Ramon (about 40 miles away) but the price has been as high as $1.50 an ear (sometimes $2). Yesterday it was 50 cents.
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