Our friends at Kingsford® Charcoal sent us these wacky facts about charcoal usage this upcoming weekend:

Charcoal briquettes.

Labor Day weekend marks the kick off to the college football season in most parts of the country – one of the biggest reasons to tailgate with friends and family whether it’s at home or in your own backyard. In fact, Americans love Labor Day cookouts so much that they fire up more than 55.8 million pounds of charcoal. This year, don’t put your grill away on Labor Day; keep it out for game day all season long to extend the summer fun.

Top 10 Cities for Labor Day Weekend Charcoal Use

City & Pounds of charcoal used

1. Los Angeles – 2,585,845
2. Chicago – 1,510,639
3. Houston – 1,357,731
4. San Antonio/Corpus Christi – 1,326,020
5. New York – 1,193,400
6. Atlanta – 1,147,297
7. Dallas/Ft Worth – 1,119,805
8. St. Louis, Mo. – 1,057,567
9. Baltimore, Md./Washington D.C – 951,129
10. Birmingham/Montgomery, Ala. -  865,977

Stacks of bags o'charcoal briquettes - pix by BBQGrail.com

How Heavy is 55.8 Million Pounds of Charcoal?

It’s the weight of more than 16,185 Sprint Cup NASCAR racecars! Plus, Americans use enough charcoal on Labor Day to go around the Talladega Superspeedway, the longest NASCAR oval, more than 464 times.

Think the Statue of Liberty is heavy?  Americans fire up more than 124 times the weight in charcoal of Lady Liberty on Labor Day.

Enough to Pack a Football Stadium

The amount of charcoal used on Labor Day is enough to…

• Cover more than 113 football fields.
• Fill the seats of the largest college football stadium (Beaver Stadium in University Park, Penn.) 32 times.

More Food for Thought

• The charcoal sold during Labor Day would measure up to more than of 224 times the height of Mt. Everest.
• The number of bags of charcoal used on Labor Day would measure up to more than 3,769 times the height of the tallest building in the United States, the Willis tower in Chicago.
• On Labor Day, enough charcoal is sold to fill more than 28 Olympic-size swimming pools (2,489,603 cubic feet of charcoal).

Thanks to our friends at Kingsford® Charcoal for these fun statistics.

Char-Broil CB940X - the classic backyard grill!

To learn about charcoal burning grills and cookers available from Char-Broil: CLICK HERE

Welcome to the cook-out!

I have always had a difficult time when it comes to grilling bacon wrapped steaks, scallops or oysters, etc. I could just never get it right. Either the bacon was undercooked – and I hate rubbery undercooked bacon! – or it would be perfectly crispy and the wrapped protein was over cooked. That is just not OK when beef tenderloin (aka filet mignon) is so pricey! To say nothing of how expensive sea scallops are and don’t get me started on those dang little oysters cause they are a pain to wrap! In fact – it was a tip I got from my favorite guy at Taylor Shellfish, that led me to re-think my approach to grilling bacon-wrapped foods. I picked up a quart of shucked oysters (yeah – I know it’s easy blah,blah,blah …. and that’s why I let someone else do it!) and he asked how I planned to prepare them. “Pan fried.” I says. “Poach them a little first.” he says.

“Huh?” I did a double take befitting Elmer Fudd in a Bugs Bunny cartoon and said: “Poach them first?”

He went on to describe a technique of lightly poaching, just a few seconds really, the shucked oysters in boiling water with aromatics in it, then immediately removing and plunging into cold water.  This firms them up, making it easier to dust them with flour or wrap them in bacon after drying them off.  I tried it. It worked and it got me to thinking. What if I cooked the bacon a bit prior to wrapping it around the oysters, scallops or steak?

NOTE: there are several brands of thinly sliced center-cut bacon available which work very well as wraps. I happen to prefer a brand of apple-smoked uncured bacon and it’s pretty thickly sliced.  So this post may be over for you if you buy that microwaved bacon or the center cut stuff!

Here’s what I did – perhaps it will inspire you to adapt it for your own cooking.

Thick slices of apple smoked uncured bacon in Dutch Oven, covered and placed in oven on warm --- about 1 hour while doing other chores around the house. Bacon throws off water and fat --- but isn't fully cooked. Remove bacon, drain and store in tightly sealed container in fridge for bacon sandwiches, morning breakfasts and use to wrap steaks, scallops, etc.

I wrapped a piece of the partially cooked and cooled bacon around a steak cut of beef tenderloin. I like to use cotton string because it kinda shapes up the steak and makes it uniform for cooking. Cotton string will not melt in the oven or in most grilling situation will not catch fire due to absorbing moisture from the meat.

I roasted the steak. That's right - roasted it. I placed it on the warming rack of the grill on the opposite side of the burner - and closed the hood. The steak roasted at about 400F degrees for 15 minutes and then I seared the ends on the hot grates. The bacon rendered and crisped - because it was already half-way there. The steak was juicy and had a nice crust on it. You can do this on just about any grill or cooker - gas, electric or charcoal.

I think this worked very well for me and I’m very interested to hear from you about any tricks or techniques you use to accomplish these same kind of results.  Do you have comments, questions, concerns or thoughts you want to share about this post? Take a moment to post in the comment section below (your comment will not appear immediately if it’s the first time you’ve made a comment.) or send them to me via email: CB@SizzleOnTheGrill(dot)com I also encourage you to join in the conversation at the Users Forums an active “community of outdoor cooks.”

Thanks and…

Welcome to the cookout!

My buddy Larry makes some tasty TASTY chicken – and whenever he holds a get-together in his back-yard tropical paradise for something that was once called “beer o-clock” but since the addition of females in all the fellers lives has become is now called a more civilized “wine o-clock” - (The Cheetos’s that once were merely poured outta the bag onto the work bench are now served in a silver-plated chaffing dish – I kid you not!) - the #1 requested food is Larry’s Beer Can Chicken. I love it. Best chicken I’ve ever had.

CB prepares beer can chicken on the grill - before & after

For some time I enjoyed making beer can chicken in the oven, grills and smokers. BUT once I began using The Big Easy oil-less turkey fryer and The Big Easy Smoker, Roaster & Grill to prepare chicken this way — I haven’t turned back.  Infrared roasted chicken or turkey is simply DEE-LISH-US!   But, and I’ll be 100% honest about this, I never really got the beer flavors in the chicken. I could not taste it. After each cook I’d inspect and it appeared that most of the beer was still in the can.  I confess that, just between you and me, I started tipping the chicken over as I removed it from the can, in order to spill the beer inside the cavity of the chicken to ensure there was beer flavor – because I thought I was doing something wrong!

Earlier this year the conversation about Beer Can Chicken started up on the Users Forums and some members chimed in on why they thought it was better to cook beer can chicken than just about any other way, while others took the opposite view. Well – perhaps a recent test which attempts to maintain proper scientific method controls to perform and evaluate this technique will maybe-kinda-sorta be the last word on the subject. Or not.  After all what fun is it to always pay attention to facts?

My friends at the Naked Whiz gave me permission to re-post this excerpt to introduction their more extensive post about Beer Can Chicken, representing their methods, test results and conclusions.  Take a look – and make up your own mind. Or – you can always just spill the beer inside the chicken when removing it from the can, like I do, cause that does taste pretty darn good!

Do you have comments, questions, concerns or thoughts you want to share about this post? Take a moment to post in the comment section below (your comment will not appear immediately if it’s the first time you’ve made a comment.) or send them to me via email: CB @ SizzleOnTheGrill dot com

Thanks and…

Welcome to the cook-out!

~~~~~~~~

Sunday, August 22, 2010
Beer Can Chicken, We Hope For The Last Time….

Ok, we took the challenge again and re-did some of our testing, as well as adding some new testing. You can read all about it on our web page, Beer Can Chicken, Myth or Fact?.

What was the new challenge? Well, some folks said they can make the beer boil, so we felt we needed to try a few new things. We tested using different devices such as a cheap metal pan, porcelain chicken sitters, and a pricey Weber device made from heavy aluminum. Yes, we found you could make the beer boil in these devices with no chicken in place, so we then added a chicken and re-did our test of “beer vs. no beer.”

When we did our previous test, we used an expensive porter, but we didn’t document the brand. So some skeptics thought we should try a better beer. We used a strong and intense Imperial Stout (Czar Imperial Stout from Avery Brewery), added crushed garlic and tons of a strong rub. We cooked two birds side by side on two chicken sitters, one empty, one with the beer mixture, and then submitted them to blind taste testing.

The results? You’ll have to read the web page. Whether or not you choose to use this method of cooking chicken, you will find some useful information. Good luck, whatever your choice!

- TNW

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Here are two recipes for this technique – you may want to check out:

CB’s EZ Beer Can Chicken in The Big Easy

Drunk Chicken

A new movie in the theaters has a 3 word title. Eat. Pray. Love. No argument on those sentiments…I might re-organize them a bit, but that’s just me. Riffing off of that 3-word title this post will reference a technique of grilling steaks, chops, chicken or fish – with three simple steps:

Sear. Grill. Smoke.

Lamb Chop or any red meat - prepped by rising to room temp, seasoned with freshly ground sea salt and black pepper - placed on the hot grates to sear.

(more…)

Are you familiar with the term: Pittsburgh-style steak? It’s a style of grilling that’s also referred to “Steak Bleu” in French cookery.  The steak is quick-seared on a hot piece of metal – like a cast iron skillet, commercial griddle or – as the name suggests and conventional urban myth seems to support – on a hot piece of steel that’s come out of the furnace in the steel mills of Pittsburgh. The story is told that steel workers didn’t have time for lunch and would bring a hunk of meat to work to slap on the hot steel – using their tools to quickly sear it on both sides at the astronomically high temps of freshly forged steel. The surface of the meat would be seared and crusty – but the inside was still raw.

I’ve received numerous emails and read posts on the Users Forums about how to create this style of grilled steak at home on the grill. Ahem. The bad news is – “You can’t.” Well, not exactly. Even the highest setting of a Char-Broil infrared grill will not be as ridiculously high as hot steel outta the forge. The good news is – “You can approximate Pittsburgh style on a grill.” Well, not exactly. You need a cast iron griddle or a skillet placed on the grates and the temperature needs to be in excess of 650F degrees. In some circumstances this is possible using a charcoal fire or one of the new Char-Broil infrared grills like the RED, Heatwave or Quantum infrared grills.

But what if you like a crusty brown seared surface and don’t want the steak raw in the center? (more…)

Before you say anything – please look at this photo I took last evening:

CB's variation on insalata caprese with ... huh? What are those ingredients? (see below)

The classic construction of “insalata caprese” is, essentially, four ingredients:

1. freshly picked and sliced garden tomatoes – still warm from the morning sun.

2. freshly made buffalo mozzarella cheese sliced into rounds nearly identical is size and thickness to the tomatoes

3. freshly pick leaves of basil snuggled between and around the first two ingredients

4. rich extra virgin olive oil drizzled onto the entire plate of tomatoes, cheese and basil.

OK maybe, just maybe add some freshly ground pepper and a drizzle of exceptionally wonderful and, of course, authentic – aged balsamic vinegar.  But only if you are a radical!

In the appetizing picture above I played around with that list of simple ingredients to please my mood and taste buds…

“Grilled haloumi cheese, sliced fresh tomatoes, prosciutto ham, fresh basil all drizzled with Kalamata Extra Virgin Olive Oil and aged balsamic vinegar and a couple of twists of freshly ground black pepper.” (more…)

John is a member of the Sizzle on the Grill Users Forums and man-oh-man have I learned a lot from him. If you post an outdoor cooking question on the forum, chances are he’ll read and ponder it – and post his answer after others have added theirs.  While all the answers are generally helpful – ol’John can really zero in on some precise information that nearly always has me slapping my forehead and saying – “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that!” (more…)

Like many parents there are several Friday afternoon high school freshman football games in my near future. I’m looking forward to these and, as often as I can, plan to help my son’s team celebrate victory with some tailgate meals immediately following the game. But for right now I’m also doing a little pre-season tailgating at the beach.

Tailgating – it isn’t just for football anymore! (more…)

Beef Chuck Short Ribs

“Beef short ribs are cut from the chuck and plate primals. A full slab of short ribs is typically about 10 inches square, ranges from 3-5 inches thick, and contains three or four ribs, intercostal muscle and tendon, and a layer of boneless meat and fat which is thick on one end of the slab and thins down to almost nothing on the other. There is a variety of ways to butcher short ribs. The ribs can be separated and cut into short lengths (typically about 2 inches long), called an “English cut”, “flanken cut” across the bones (typically about 1/2 inch thick), or cut into boneless steaks (a style recently introduced in the U.S.A. as a cheaper alternative to rib steak).” – Wikipedia

I’ve written several posts over the years about cooking short ribs – all of which have pretty much used the flanken cut.

CB’s Hawaiian-Style Short Ribs

Girls on a Grill Grilled & Braised Short Ribs

Mr. Jig’s Braised & Grilled Short Ribs

Julie Reinhardt’s Kalbi-Style Short Ribs

CB’s Short Ribs on a “Dark & Stormy” Night

This week my local grocery store butcher offered short ribs in the boneless steak style.  It took all of about 2 seconds for me to scoop up a package and take them home and before I got to the check-out stand I decided to marinate to enhance the natural flavor and layer of flavors by grilling and glazing for the final dish. Here’s what I did: (more…)

Just about anyone under the age of 15 is techno-savvy beyond what we adults could have imagined at that age. In my case, that was more than 40 years ago and the idea that a ‘communicator’ like we saw used on the original Star Trek would transmit voice, TV, hold 1,000 songs and do calculus — well that was indeed the product of a rich imagination.  My son is just about to mark his 15th birthday and he owns and uses a computer that is more complex than went to the moon. While he’s growing into a strapping young man, exercising and taking charge of his diet – I won’t take credit for it. He’s pretty much been motivated on his own. (more…)