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: Smoked Chicken & Best In Smoke

Best In Smoke

Food Network's new barbecue competition show starts tonight (Sunday) at 10pm and runs for 4 weeks.  Six teams with renowned pitmasters compete through a series of cooking challenges, vying for a $50,000 prize.  Friday I had the opportunity to discuss the show with host, Chef Bryan Caswell, in a conference call with a few other bloggers.

The show clearly is not intended to be a behind the scenes look at a KCBS style BBQ competition.  This doesn't mean a lot to most people but some competitive barbecuers will declare, "That is NOT BBQ - it's grilling" if it isn't ribs, chicken, brisket, and pork done low and slow.  Chef Caswell took that question straight on and said that there was no way to make everyone happy.  Bbq means a lot of different things to different people and gave a great example of how both his grandmothers make gumbo.  Both say theirs is the best and the other doesn't know how to make gumbo.

The show challenges do involve live fire, wood, and a protein, "mostly smoking".  The pitmasters get to use their own smokers, which is a good thing in my opinion.  There will be some dramatic moments for sure and Mother Nature gets a bit snippy along the way.  One very interesting comment that Chef made was that he thought the major regions of US barbecue were represented well but then threw in an "except for _________".  The interesting part is there was someone representing that region in the competition so I guess the implication is that he/she/they sucked.   You have to tune in to find out what that is all about.

I'm looking forward to the show tonight.  I'd like to say I'm impartial, but I'm not.  I'm pulling for Chris Lilly and Ken Hess to win it all. 

Five Tips for Smoked Chicken

[My Five Tips series are not how-to tutorials.  These are meant to be quick tips that I would share if we bumped into each other in the grocery store and you said, "Hey, I'm grilling/smoking ________ tomorrow, got any pointers?"  These are ideas that consistently work for me, regardless of the recipe I'm doing.] 

All that talk about barbecue made me hungry, so I smoked a couple of chickens that afternoon.  We have grilled a bunch of birds this year but it has been a while since I smoked some.  When I bit into the finished product, I remembered why it is worth taking the 3-4 hours extra.  The heavenly hint of smoke and the tender, juicy meat got raves from the whole family.

Hanging out in my Big Green Egg.

Brine

Soaking your bird for 3-4 hours in a seasoned brine helps ensure a moist chicken and adds flavoring.  For two birds I use 3/4 cup salt, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 Tbsp peppercorns, 1 Tbsp dried minced garlic, 1 Tbsp fennel seed, and enough water to fill a 2 gallon container.  

Spatchcock 

Beer butt chicken my arse.  Chicken on a throne is cute I guess (unless you're the chicken) but it is a set up for uneven cooking temps.  You're putting the breast (most likely to dry out) in the hotter/higher part of your cooker.  A spatchcocked or butterflied bird lies flat and in a narrower range of temperatures for more even cooking.  Just my opinion, but it's the right one;)

Wood You?

A lot of people will tell you to use a mild fruit wood for smoking chicken because poultry takes on smoke easily.  Some will specifically tell you not to use hickory or oak.  I disagree, I like hickory for chicken and turkey.  I like to use 2-3 fist sized chunks of hickory and 1-2 chunks of cherry buried in my coal for grilling chicken.  

Mop

I don't bother mopping my ribs, brisket or butts but I religiously mop my whole chickens every 30 minutes.  This literally cooks on layer after layer of flavor.  The mop should be thin, not thick.  My favorite mop is 1 cup of KC Masterpiece Southern Style BBQ Sauce (or your favorite commercial sauce), 3/4 cup cider vinegar, 1/2 cup light beer, 1.5 teaspoon of salt, 1.5 teaspoon black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of chipotle/garlic hot sauce.  

Smoke It Up

I smoke my chickens at 250f for about 3 1/2 to 4 hours.  I take them out when they hit 160f in the breast and 180f in the deep thigh.  

Bird 1

Bird 2

Blogger Get Together

It's hard to believe that our East Tennessee blogger get together at Larry's is just over a month away, on June 19th.  

Double click on the above for details of our upcoming blogger party. We discovered that we scheduled it for Father's Day, but decided to proceed - treat Dad to a day trip to Almost Heaven South. Several folks have already committed, but we'd like to hear from everyone by June 1 who plans to attend - email Larry at grandpop1@yahoo.com. We want to be sure we have plenty of food, but don't want to overbuy.