Blount BBQ Bash This Weekend

This weekend it the Blount BBQ Bash charity event. If you are in the East Tennessee area, stop by on Saturday and enjoy a great BBQ contest, wacky canoe races, and live music. This event has raised $50,000 for charities in its first two years!Alexis and I are volunteering for this event so I won't be around for the next few days. We'll be helping with set up, check in, logistics, support, and vending. But I've also landed my choice assignment to assist a well known BBQ expert during the event. I'll blog about it later but I am excited (Shush Brandi! Don't tell who it is or I'll delete your comment:) ).

Sunshine International Supermarket

It was a wash out for grilling this weekend.....but the sun is shining on Knoxville! Well, more specifically, Sunshine Supermarket, a full service Asian market has opened. It is an 18,000 square foot store full of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Indian, and Philippine products and ingredients. All kinds of things that I never thought I would have found in Knoxville. (Picture was taken early Sunday morning because there were too many cars in the way on Saturday. )They have aisle after aisle of things I have never used or heard of. We spent an hour browsing.
I came straight home and googled about 1/2 dozen ingredients.

You like fresh fish? Fine, pick one out of the tanks...they're still swimming!Exotic mushrooms? Take your pick off of a half aisle of them.Want a different kind of rice? Take your pick off of an aisle full of them. We picked a red rice. We walked through the store "just to look" today to get a feel on what kind of stuff they had. Of course I ended up an armful of "I'm just getting this one thing". I got a dried citrus powder, several varieties of noodles, red rice, dried red chili peppers, and a few other odds and ends. It's a great store and the staff are incredibly friendly.

But my favorite score? This!Sriracha sauce! It is a Thai chili sauce that is out of this world. It brings tons of heat but also has a rich flavor. Lord of The Wings danced with this devil when he was wanting to make excruciatingly hot wings. It's tasty good stuff (I think they teach that term at the Culinary Institute of America and Le Cordon Bleu, right?).

So last night I made a simple, quick stir fry noodle dish with a side of broccoli with oyster sauce.

Ingredients
3 ea chicken thighs, boneless, skinless diced into small 1/4 to 1/2" pieces
3 T honey
1 T sriracha sauce
1 T chili powder
1/2 T dried tangerine peel powder***
1/2 ea yellow onion, thinly sliced
1/3 ea green bell pepper (I'd add some red bell pepper too next time)
1 t ginger, minced
2 ea green onion, julienne cut into 1" pieces
4 ounces Chinese style dried egg noodles

Instructions
Cook noodles to directions, drain, and set aside.

Mix honey, sriracha sauce, chili powder and tangerine peel powder. Toss diced chicken into the mix.

Bring wok up to medium-high heat. Add about 1-2 tablespoons of peanut oil (I like to sneak in a few drops of seasame oil) and swirl around to coat the wok. Stir fry the chicken on the wok until done, I'd guess it was about 3-5 minutes. I always cut one of the fattest pieces in half just to make sure because outward appearances can be deceiving. Remove the meat and juices to a plate.

Add a few more drops of oil if you need to and bring the onion, green pepper, and ginger to the party, tossing them frequently. I only let mine go a few minutes because I like my veggies a bit crispy.

Now add the noodles and toss them around with the veggies. This may take a few minutes until they start to untangle. Pour the meat mixture and green onion in.

Serve.

I was surprised at how much heat the noodles picked up but it was a great dish for something I just threw together.

***You can just omit this stuff. Chef E was great in helping me try to make it work earlier in the day. I cooked 5 small batches of chicken trying to get the flavor right. I was going to make Orange Chicken but this tangerine peel powder just does not equate well to dried tangerine peel. In small quantities it didn't bring anything to the table and in larger quantities, it brought only bitter. I'd say it's about the same difference between fresh cilantro and dried cilantro. You just can't sub one out for the other just by adjusting quantity like you can with other herbs.

Mega Super Fantastic Recipe Free Episode

Wow, I haven't posted in 5 days. And none of you were concerned enough to send out a search party or even call to make sure I was okay?

What if I had accidentally super glued (I guess these days it's all about Mighty Putty) myself to the floor again or I had been surrounded by a vicious pack of fainting goats? I forgive you.....this time;)

So where the heck have I been all week?

First off, I spent much of the week laboring over tabulating the results from our Name That Chicken poll, validating the results, and then working with various graphic arts company to produce these spectacular official results. (BS....he spent 3 minutes using Excel.)As you can see, Little Bang! Cock was the recipe name of choice. That was my favorite too. But I have to give props to Dick of Opinions & Rectums, We All Got One and Mary of Rejected Truth for mounting very strong write in candidates.

BD made me laugh with "Mini Henny Penny- The Thai Is Falling".

Mary went cerebral on me and came up with Rakesh Saxena Chicken "because he was Thai and chicken". I had to google to get the pun behind that one as I do not have an intimate knowledge of fugitive Thai financiers like Mary does. Hmmmm that makes me wonder where she spent her formative years, who this Mary really is, and what international investigative branch she works for. (That or maybe she reads a paper every now and then.)

I have a confession. Those weren't REALLY cornish game hens in that recipe.....
JUST KIDDING! Sheesh, I posted some of the geese pictures on my photo blog and those folks all said how much they hated geese and wanted to see them burn;)

I also spent some time this week setting up the deck for summer grilling and BBQ mode. All that really is was just doing a spring clean of the Egg table and bringing out the Brinkmann's charcoal grill for additional cooking space. That way I can grill on it while I'm doing a long smoke on the Big Green Egg. I couldn't convince Alexis to let me put the offset smoker on the deck for the summer, too. Finally, I was also interviewed twice this week. First I was interviewed by the infamous Lord Of The Wings. Then I was interviewed by Mary Constantine of the NewsSentinel for an upcoming bit about grilling. It was fun having her and Saul Young over for a late lunch.It felt like we were just having neighbors over for a casual bite. I think I "interviewed" poor Saul about photography as much as Mary could interview me about grilling :)

Anyway, that's where I've been all week. What trouble have YOU been getting into?

Spatchcock Chicken

Everyone talks about "beer butt chicken" or "drunken chicken" like it is the ultimate in grilled/roasted chicken. Part of the hype is just the entertainment value. Ha ha we stuck a can up a chicken's butt, ya get it? The other spiel is that the moisture contents in the can guarantee a juicy bird.But in my opinion, in order to get the best grilled chicken ever, you don't need a fancy rotisserie grill and you don't need to put Milwaukee's Best up Rhode Island's finest. The one thing I don't like about beer butt chicken is.....well here let me show you with this scientific graphic developed at a leading think tank.Okay, I might have made this one myself....

Most grills, smokers, and cookers have a temperature difference between the dome/cover temp and the actual temperature at the grate where the food actually cooks, because duh, heat rises. The difference with the Big Green Egg is about 25 degrees between dome and grate temp. So with beer butt chicken, the chicken isn't cooking at even temps from top to bottom.

So how do you ensure a juicy, evenly cooked bird? Three steps.

First
Brine the chicken for 6-8 hours. I use a simple brine of
1 gallon water
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon black pepper

Rinse and dry the bird.

Second
Spatchcock the chicken. This means butterflying it by cutting out the backbone and flattening it out. That way it cooks at an even temp from top to bottom. I was going to do a video but this one does it perfectly.

Third
Season the bird with your favorite poultry rub and cook it on indirect heat (this night I put a deep dish pizza pan between the fire and the chick chick) at 350f degrees until the internal temp of the chicken registers 165f in the breast or 180f in the thigh. Even if you do this in an oven, it's better than sticking a whole chicken in a roasting pan.You'll have a succulent, evenly roasted chicken that will ROCK.To serve, I quarter mine by splitting down the breastbone in half and then cutting the halves at an angle under the thigh.

I have to say that my smoked chicken is even better but that takes 3-4 times as long so in the middle of the week? This works for me!

Sometimes I make an extra chicken just to make sure we have leftovers for things like fettuccine alfredo with roasted chicken:) (yeah, we went way too heavy on the sauce tonight, my bad)
So give a spatchcocked chicken a try for the perfect roasted chicken! And on that I'll leave on a quote that I once read on a food forum:

"I told my father-in-law that I spatchcocked a chicken and he said, 'Oh yeah? I just bitch slapped a sirloin'."

For printable version, click here:

When pigs fly.....

uh oh, too late, swine flu!

For the record, the Centers for Disease Control assures you that:

"Swine influenza viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork products is safe."

I want to further assure you that despite my affinity for all things pork (ribs, chops, tenderloins, shoulder), you can not contract swine influenza A (H1N1) from reading this blog.That is unless you happen to be using a computer that was previously used by an infected hog that sneezed on his/her pig feet without washing or pickling them before using the computer. If that's the case, you're on your own.

Brick Oven Beef n Swiss Meat Pies

[Guess who got his camera back yesterday!]

One of the best things about the Big Green Egg is its versatility. Sure it's a smoker AND a grill. But it's also a wood fired oven that is great for making pizzas and bread, similar to the brick ovens thanks to the Egg's thick ceramic construction.

Tonight we took one of my childhood favorites (cheeseburger turnovers), put an adult spin on them, and baked them on the Egg. You can do these in a 425f oven and they'll still be great, but fresh off the Egg they were AMAZINGLY good!

Brick Oven Beef n Swiss Meat Pies

Ingredients
1 lb lean ground beef (turkey or pork would work as well)
1/2 ea vidalia onion, chopped fine
1/4 ea green bell pepper, chopped fine
salt to taste (we used about 3/4 t of Kosher coarse salt)
pepper to taste (we used about 3/4 t)
2 cans of refrigerated biscuits
10 slices of baby swiss cheese

Instructions
In a preheated skillet, brown the meat, onion and bell pepper. Drain well, you don't want a soggy pie do you?
Flour a surface, take two biscuits, overlap them and then roll them out into a figure 8 kind of like this:
Spoon about 3 tablespoons of the meat mixture onto on half of the dough and top with sliced cheese like this:
Pull and stretch the empty side over and onto the mixture. We find it helps to slightly moisten the edge of the dough with water first. Then crimp the pie closed with a fork like this:
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you to preheat your oven or Big Green Egg to 425f. If you're using the Egg, set it up with the plate setter LEGS DOWN with a pizza stone on top. If you're using an oven, a pizza stone would help but you can use a baking sheet if that's what you have. If you don't preheat the stone, the bottom of the pies will be a bit doughy, so take your time and get it hot (if Michael Scott was here, that'd be a "That's what she said!" line).Bake the pies for 8-10 minutes each, until golden brown all over.Mmmmmmmmm FREAKING AWESOME COMFORT FOOD!!!
This is a great dish to get your kids to help with. You could do a "meat pie bar" at a party or event where people pick their own ingredients to go into the pie. You can do any variations you want, such as:

Cheeseburger turnover: meat, onion, & American cheese
Taco turnover: meat, onion, taco seasoning, and pepper jack cheese. Dip in taco sauce.
Gyro Turnover: gyro meat (google Alton Brown gyro), red onion, & feta cheese. Dip in tzatziki sauce.
Club Turnover: ground turkey, bacon crumbles, small diced tomato. Dip in a flavored mayo.

For printable recipe, click here:

Name That Chicken Poll

I couldn't decide on a name for the Thai cornish hen recipe that I came up with tonight so I need some help. Can you tell I like punny recipe names? Vote for your favorite over there >>>>>> in my sidebar or feel free to write in your own idea in the comments section.

The options so far are:

1. A Little Bird Flew (special rub - H5N1)
   
2. Little Bang! Cock (Bangkok)
   
3. Phuket Chicken (Southern Thai province)
   
4. I wrote a better one in your comments.
   

The menu tonight was
Yet to be named cornish hens
Stir Fried Broccoli
Thai Noodles with Peanut Sauce

Excuse the crappy pictures...waiting on my real camera to come back in the mail. Ive quit even bothering with lighting or presentation for now.
'
Thai Cornish Hens (to be named later)
Ingredients
2 cornish hens, thawed and halved
1/2 c soy sauce
1/4 c brown sugar
1 1/2 t peanut oil
1/2 t sesame oil
2 t thai fish sauce
2 t oyster sauce
1 t ginger, fresh ground
1/4 t black pepper, fresh ground
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 t red pepper flakes
1/2 t basil (dried only because our fresh basil is too young to start plucking yet. I would use 1 T of fresh)
1 T cilantro, chopped

Instructions
Mix all ingredients except the hens. Marinade the hens in the mix for 2 hours.

Put the halved hens on a raised rack into a 350 degree oven. Reserve the marinade. The raised rack lets the hot air circulate around the hens instead of just across the top. I swear this makes a difference compared to just slopping them into a casserole dish.Boil the reserved marinade for 60 seconds. Baste the chicken every 15 minutes with the marinade. Pull and rest after about 1 hour, when a thermometer stuck into the thigh reads 170f. Using a remote probe thermometer is great so you don't have to keep opening the oven door.

Stir Fried Broccoli with Oyster Sauce (Joy of Cooking 1997 version pg 352)
Ingredients
1 head Broccoli chopped into 1" pieces
1 tablespoon Peanut oil
3 cloves Garlic finely minced
1 tablespoon Ginger finely minced
1/4 teaspoon Red pepper flakes
1/3 cup Chicken stock
1/4 cup Oyster sauce
3 drops Sesame Oil

Instructions
Heat oil in wok. Stir fry garlic, ginger, and pepper for just a few seconds. Don't let the garlic brown. Add in broccoli (wet from rinsing) and stir fry for two minutes.

Add chicken broth, cover tightly, and steam for four minutes.

Add oyster sauce and stir fry for 3-5 more minutes. (This is our family's favorite broccoli dish. It works great adding in thin sliced beef for beef & broccoli.)

Thai Noodles With Peanut Sauce
Ingredients
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
3 teaspoons soy sauce
3 teaspoons peanut butter
1 1/2 teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon Red pepper flakes
3 garlic
8 ounces spaghetti
1/4 cup green onion
1/4 cup peanuts

Instructions
Combine broth, ginger, soy sauce, peanut butter, honey, red pepper, and garlic in a small sauce pan. Cook over medium heat until peanut better melts and is heated through to a smooth consistency. Add to noodles to coat. Garnish with green onions and peanuts. (My notes: I don't know where I found this recipe. Based on it's Americanized version of a foreign dish, my guess it was from some cooking magazine. This is a decent base side dish and is actually surprisingly flavorful & spicy. But it needs some color, like some cilantro and red bell pepper. It's just visually dull.)