Green Egg Tuesday at Elder Ace Hardware - Chattanooga

I will be talking grilling with our friends at Elder Ace Hardware's East Brainerd location in Chattanooga.  It is Tuesday, June 12th from 5pm to 7pm.

We will be talking about the Flame Boss, beef tenderloin, and maybe a few secrets that I learn at the Certified Angus Beef® Brand's Chef Summit next week.  If you are in the area, come on out!

Green Chile Steak Seasoning

[FTC Disclaimer]  This post is sponsored by the Certified Angus Beef® Brand in conjunction with a social media campaign through Sunday Supper LLC.  All opinions are my own.

I'm a believer in that good steaks only need a little salt, pepper, and garlic.  But sometimes you want to shake your seasonings up a bit.  That's why I came up with this Green Chile Steak Seasoning this weekend for a pair of Certified Angus Beef® Brand ribeye steaks.  

I tweaked the usual salt, pepper, garlic base with cumin, coriander, and poblano chile for something that is more "Summer-ish" to me.  Poblano is very mild, it is more fruity than spicy to me. Hatch chiles are another great chile to use for this.  If you want to elevate the heat, switch it out for jalapeno or even serrano chiles.

Green Chile Steak Seasoning

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons coarse kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons coarse black pepper (16 mesh, Malabar preferred)
• 1 tablespoon ground dried poblano chile
• 1.5 teaspoons granulated garlic
• 3/4 teaspoons ground dried shallot or onion
• 1/4 teaspoon coriander
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin

Candied Bacon French Toast Casserole with Mixed Berry Syrup

We served Candied Bacon French Toast Casserole with Mixed Berry Syrup at the Sunshine State Eggfest.  

This dish was Alexis' idea, and it was a huge hit.  There is a lot of sweet in this dish, with the homemade syrup and whipped topping but the candied bacon has just enough saltiness to balance out the sweet.

With 4,700 people attending, our sample sizes were a wee bit smaller.

This dish is suitable for serving at an Eggfest because about 90% of is can be made ahead of time.  That also makes it great to serve the family on a weekend morning.

Candied Bacon French Toast Casserole with Mixed Berry Syrup

Ingredients

For the Candied Bacon

Event Recap: 2018 Sunshine State Eggfest - Vero Beach Florida

Last weekend, thousands of hungry tasters descended on the 2018 Sunshine State Eggfest hosted by Wassi's Meat Market like a horde of ravenous locusts.  They were there to do 4 things:

1. Taste samples of foods cooked on Big Green Egg kamado grills by some of the best backyard chefs in the country.
2. Raise money for a good cause, Candlelighters of Brevard.
3. Take advantage of fantastic deals on Big Green Eggs, grilling supplies, and accessories.
4. Chew bubblegum.

They were all out of bubblegum.

In addition to cooking at the event, I was part of a Big Green Egg Dream Team cooking the dinner for 400+ people at the Friday night Meet and Greet.  Here are some behind the scenes pictures from this fantastic Eggfest.

We added branded aprons to our cook team's uniform this year.  We were having problems with getting these done but Alexis' friend, KS Customs in Knoxville was able to embroider them for us on short notice.

Being a successful cook team is like an iceberg.  The effort that you see on Saturday is just 10% of the work that goes into it.  The other 90% is a ton of preparation, planning, and sweat equity from cook teams, vendors, and the sponsoring Egg dealer.

Doing a successful and food safe cook at a big Eggfest like this one requires a good bit of equipment. Here are 4 Cambro hot boxes for keeping food warm, a large Igloo cooler, a Yeti 75, prep table, my grilling gear box, a griddle, tent, adjustable rigs, chairs, and cases of foil steam pans.
It's a 700+ mile trip to Vero Beach so everything has to be neatly stacked, waterproofed, and tied down.