Five Tips: Grilled Fish

Back in the day I was a surfer*.   Fact is, when enter the ocean, you enter the food chain.  [Cue the Theme From Jaws]

Tonight I was cruising the seafood department at my favorite Food City (#694 on Morrell Road) and saw they had wild caught shark steaks on sale for $4.99 a lb!   I now live hundreds of miles from the ocean and haven't surfed in over a decade but figured, why take a chance.  I decided to be proactive and eat a shark* before a shark eats me.  

My fishmonger, Billy, wrapped me up two nice shark steaks and put them on ice to keep them cool on the way home.   [The ice is a small touch, but it is important and it's something a full service seafood department should do for you compared to the "wrap it-pack it-and-stack-it stores" that just pump out pre-packaged stuff onto their shelves and ignore you.] 

Here's what I did with the steaks for a very quick and easy weeknight meal.

I like to use some grilled lime slices as garnish.

Grilled Shark Steaks with "Teri-sharky basting sauce"
source:  www.nibblemethis.com
serves:  2

Ingredients

•  2 shark steaks (about 1.25 lbs)
• 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
• 2 Tbsp peanut oil
• 1 Tbsp sherry
• 1 Tbsp lime juice
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flake
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat charcoal grill to high heat (400-450f).  Clean and oil your grill grates once hot.
2. Make the Teri-sharky basting sauce by whisking the teriyaki, oil, sherry, lime juice, pepper flake and garlic powder together in small bowl.
3. Season the shark steaks with salt and pepper.  
4. Grill the steaks for 4 minutes.  Flip, baste, and grill another 5 minutes.  
5. Flip back to the other side, baste, and cook another minute.  Check the internal temp and remove when the steaks hit 130-135f.  

Keep iced until the last second before going onto the grill, especially on warm days.

Season with salt and pepper at the last minute too.  Salt will draw out the moisture if you do it too far in advance.

Just when the shark thought it was safe to come out of the water....

 Five Tips for Grilling Fish

1. Keep it cold - Unlike other meats, fish does NOT need to sit at room temperature before grilling.  Fish is highly perishable and should be kept on ice until the last possible minute before going on the grill.
2. Dry that fish - Sure he spent his whole life in water, but patting the fish dry will help prevent the fish from sticking to the grill grate.
3. Tuck your tail - fish pieces are often not uniform in thickness which means they won't cook evenly on the grill.  Tuck the thin "tail" end under the rest of the fillet to get an even thickness.
4. Test Early Test Often - You can't "undo" overdone fish.  The general rule of thumb is cook a TOTAL time of 10 minutes per inch of thickness.  But to be sure, check with an instant read thermometer (a Thermapen REALLY comes in handy with this short time windows).  Your target internal temp is as low as 120f for fatty fish (salmon, tuna) to 140f for leaner fish.
5. Don't rest - while most meats benefit from a period of rest after cooking, fish does not.  The proteins are more evenly distributed and do not require a rest, serve cooked fish right away.

Bonus tip:  If you grill a lot of fish, you really need to get a set of GrillGrates.  They give good grill marks, gently grill the fish, and more importantly, the grill tool that comes with them makes it easy to cleanly lift the fish off grates without shredding, tearing, and pulverizing it.  They work great with burgers, steaks, chops, and chicken too but I hate to cook fish without them. 

• Surfing - That was back when I grew up and lived in Florida.  The waves here in Tennessee are horrible.  
• Eat shark - Yes, you're right, "Chris always says that he HATES fish".  So technically I didn't eat a shark...I fed a shark to my family.  I just ate asparagus.

[Standard Disclaimer] I received no compensation for this post.  

Five Tips: Injecting Meat

Are you trypanophobic?

Trypanophobia is the extreme fear of shots, IV's, and injections. If you are, here is your chance for revenge. Try injecting meat with marinades.

Why would you do such a thing? Injecting a marinade into meat does a few things, depending on the marinade used.

• Fast flavor – Marinades and brines take time to work and penetrate the meat. Injecting gets instant penetration and gets flavor throughout the meat in 5 minutes.
• Tender texture – Some marinades help the heat in breaking down the structure of the meat, making it tender.
• Adds moisture – injecting liquid into a piece of meat obviously increases the moisture in the roast

Today I am playing with three marinades. I'm smoking two pork butts on my Big Green Egg. One has Chris Lilly's world championship pork butt injection doctored with a little Apple Pie Moonshine. The other one has a creation of my own. 

Fat cap down.

On Alexis' Big Green Egg I'm slow roasting a beef eye of round and used a commerical creole butter injection for a creole roast beef. (She's at football practice with Trevor. She won't be happy when she finds I did a low and slow in her Egg but better to beg forgiveness than ask permission!)

Drip pan for collecting the au jus

I don't always inject, but when I do....I do Dos Equis – errrr, I mean - here are Five Tips for injecting meat.

Tip 1: Push-me-pull-you

This isn't injecting like a shot in the doctor's office where you hit a vein and inject all the medicine in one spot. Inject the needle all the way in. Then as you push the piston to inject, slowly pull the injector out at the same time still pushing the piston.

Tip 2: Keep it under wraps

If the meat is packaged in cryo-wrap, leave it in the wrap and inject it through the plastic. This helps cut down on the accidental sprays that happen when you pull the needle out of the meat.

Tip 3: Smaller is better

When making your own injections, use finely ground spices or your injection will frequently clog your needle, a total pain in the butt.

Tip 4: What cuts of meat benefit from injecting?

Typically cuts that are large, lean, or bland. I will sometimes inject pork butts (large), pork loin (bland & large), beef eye of round (lean), and whole poultry (bland, lean).

Tip 5: Clean Needles Save Lives

The hollow tip of the needle will get meat caught in it as the needle is pulled out each time. Simply washing the needle when done won't get that out and you'll have icky creatures growing in there for your next use. Use a paper clip or wire to clear this area out.

If you haven't ever tried injections, don't be trypanophobic...give it a shot! (snicker) You can buy a cheap injector with a jar of commercial injection sauce for about $7 at many grocery stores.

Five Tips: Steak Fajitas

We make steak fajitas often around here.

But instead of rehashing another steak fajita recipe, I'm just going to do something different.  Usually when someone catches you off guard and asks, "How would you cook [insert item here]", then you have about 30 seconds to give them a crash course answer.  That's what I'm doing here, five quick tips for steak fajitas.

1) What's your beef?  Skirt steak is most traditional, but I prefer flank steak or flat iron steak. 

2) Use a bold marinade - The key "notes" in a flank steak marinade are lime juice, cumin, garlic, chili powder and your signature spices.  The marinade should be strong since the marinating times are usually shorter (just a few hours) for fajitas.  (SEE 5 before your put the beef in the marinade.)

3) Cook temps/times - Grill direct at 450f for 4 minutes a side or until it hits 125f internal.  Don't overcook these, they should be medium rare.  Let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing very thin.

Seared on my Craycort Cast Iron Grates.

4) Grill 'em all - Almost anything that goes into a fajita should be grilled first, just my opinion.  Grill the onions, peppers, or whatever veggies while you grill the steak.  Grill the tortillas for 20-30 seconds a side.  You don't have to grill the cheese, ha ha.

5) Power boost - This is one of my trademark secrets...oops, I done let it slip.  Save 1-2 Tablespoons of uncontaminated marinade and whisk it into 1/2 cup of sour cream.  Add some of this to your assembled fajitas  

Here's the marinade I made up last night....

1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 ea jalapeno, seeded and diced
1/2 ea habanero, seeded and diced
2 ea roasted red pepper, diced (jarred variety, use 1 fresh roasted)
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 Tbsp turbinado sugar
2 Tbsp lime juice
1 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp oregano, dried
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp dried chipotle powder

Run it all through a processor until somewhat smooth and then marinate your meat for 2-4 hours.

Ain't No Thing But A Bean Thing

My favorite local news station WBIR did their "Homegrown" feature on Bush's Beans this week.  

The timing could not have been better.  Because to kick off the grilling season (for you heathens that don't grill all year 'round), Bush's Beans is sponsoring the cook outs of 10 food bloggers this month to get the word out about their Grillin' Beans.  

I was thrilled to be picked because I have been using Bush's Beans for 15+ years and Bush's Beans is a local company, employing a LOT of people in the Knoxville area.  Their Grillin' Beans flavors are relatively new (3 years, I think) compared to their 100+ year history.  

This isn't a "sponsored" picture.  These are actually SOME of the Grillin' Beans we already have in our pantry, not free samples that they have sent me.  I was smoking two chickens today and was going to serve the Smokehouse Traditions Grillin' Beans with them.  I have always used Bush's Beans if I have the choice so I'm proud to get to help represent them.  

So stay tuned in the next few weeks for the cookout and a Grillin' giveaway of a cookout kit of assorted cookware, grilling tools and a supply of Bush's Grillin' Beans.

[Standard Disclaimer] but I loves me some Bush's Beans.