Monthly Roundup, September, 2007

Time for another link roundup. Blogging has been light for the last week or so. I haven't cooked much and been super busy. Mrs. Hog and I have gotten busy with Church and biking (finally found a cheap trailer to haul the kids around) in the last couple weeks. When I've had free time I've been playing a little Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. Anyway, to the links!!!

• Cupcake crackdown via Serious Eats. It really is a shame when political correctness gets out of hand like this. I mean, denying kids a cupcake to celebrate birthdays....come on.

• Alaina from Serious Eats visited Wilbur's Barbecue in Goldsboro, NC this month. Wilbur's holds a special place in my heart. It's on the way to the beach from where I grew up (and we went to the beach a lot) and we stopped there to eat many, many times per year. It was especially fun when you were caravaning and had enough people for them to serve it family style....mmmmm, good!!

• Whitetrash rediscovered his library this month. I often forget about the piles of cookbooks I have. I really need to start digging them out more.

• Plowboys BBQ had the opportunity to participate in Operation BBQ. This was a great way to show appreciation for our men and women in service to our country. I would have loved to participate.

• The HellChef tells us all about sausages. This was a very informative post for me.

• The HellChef also tells us how he learned to love grits. I can't imagine why somebody wouldn't love grits in the first place!!!

• Why the BBQGuy competes in contests. I wish more competition bloggers would make posts like this.
  

• Men in Aprons defines "blackened" as it pertains to blackening foods. They then give us a recipe. I love me some blackened fish. I've cooked and eaten tons of blackened dolphin (mahi mahi) and tuna....fresh, like caught that day by me (or my Dad). It is fantastic. There is not much my Dad liked more than fishing and cooking his catch.

• Learn about the CSREES via slashfood. Lots of good info from the CSREES.

• My last link is not a blog. It's the Walmart product page for a Brinkmann stainless steel gas grill. Mrs. Hog and I celebrate five years of marriage on Friday. ***insert the "I can't believe she stuck with you that long jokes here*** She surprised me with the grill when I got home from work (no ahe didn't pay 600 bucks for it...almost half of that). That muther is huge. I've only cooked hot dogs and pork chops on it so far. After I get a few cooks under my belt I'll write up a little review for you. I've got to remember how to cook with gas...it's been 10 years or so.
  

Char-Broil/TEC burners defective??

I just saw this post at about.com about possible problems with Char-Broils relatively new line of TEC infrared burners. I haven't had the opportunity to play with one of these, but I've read some about them and they've gotten good reviews from many industry folks, as well as bloggers. These defective burners could be a real problem for Char-Broil and TEC owners. Take a look at that post and make sure you check your grill for the broken screws.

UPDATE 9/21

Whitetrash was kind enough to post Charbroil's official response in the comments. I'll post it here. Thanks, Whitetrash.

Char-Broil has seen the messages posted on this and other forums regarding failing fasteners used in manufacturing of a limited number our TEC burners. We regret that a few TEC by Char-Broil Series owners have experienced burner performance issues.

Char-Broil wants to assure all TEC Series customers that we will take care of their individual issues and assist them in replacing the complete infra red burner assembly in their grill.
Char-Broil encourages TEC Series owners who have encountered a problem with the fasteners to call 1-888-430-7870 to receive a new TEC stainless steel burner assembly from Char-Broil.

Our TEC Consumer Services line will be open 7 days a week from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM EST. One of our customer service agents will be happy to assist you and a warranty service kit will be shipped out at no charge via priority 2nd day air shipping.

We stand behind the safety and performance of our products and make it a priority to respond to our consumer’s needs and concerns.

Good for Charbroil for making good on their product.

Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABTs)

Here is another post I've been meaning to get up for a couple weeks. I posted about atomic buffalo turds one other time, but I didn't really give them their due. We had a pot-luck party a couple weeks ago and I offered to make the appetizer. ABTs were the obvious choice.

Start out by cutting the stem off and halving the peppers. Then I like to use a grapefruit spoon to scoop out the membranes and seeds. Just use the teeth of the spoon to cut through the pulp up near the stem. Then simply rake it down the length of the pepper to scoop everything out. If you want them to be hotter, take out the white pulp and seeds, but leave the thin membrane on the inside wall of the pepper. Give em a good rinse now to get extra seeds, pulp, etc. off of them.


Coring out the peppers is probably the biggest pain of doing ABTs. Once that is done I lay out the peppers and Mrs. Hog helps out with the rest of the process. An extra set of hands make it go a lot quicker.

Make sure your cream cheese is soft before you try to pipe it into the pepper. I let mine sit out for a while, but you can microwave it if you have to. Be careful, though....you want it soft, not melted. I like to add some cayenne pepper to the cream cheese. Just add the pepper to taste in a bowl and use the back of spoon or a spatula to mix it in. Mrs. Hog bakes cakes, so I use one of those fancy piping bags for the cream cheese. If you don't have any of those, just cut the corner out of a zip-lock bag.


Then simply add the lil' smokies on top of the cream cheese. Give them a little push and they'll kind of stick into the cream cheese.


Use a half of a strip of bacon to wrap around the pepper. When I just do a few of these I use toothpicks to secure the bacon, but when i do this many I use bamboo skewers. I put the skewers through the lil' smoky and not the pepper. It's enough to hold the whole thing together, but it's easier getting the ABT's on and off. It also makes it easier handling that many ABTs at once.


Unfortunately, we were running late for the party and I didn't get pics of the cooking or the finished product. Luckily I had old pictures from a Christmas party last year in TX. One hundred turds pretty much fills up the Chargriller. As you can see, this was before I figured out the skewer thing. You can cook these at whatever temp you want. If I do them by themselves I cook them at 275ish for about an hour and a half. They're done when the bacon is done to your liking, which is crispy for me.


These things are as beautiful as they are delicious!!


It's important to note that this recipe is really just a sample. Use your imagination and come up with other stuff to do with these. You can change the cheese, the spices, the kinds of peppers, etc. One of the best ones that I've done was to mince up some pork butt really fine and mix it in with the cream cheese. I believe I left out the smoky on that one. Anyway, you can do anything with these and they'll turn out great.

Grilled Pork Loin

Better later than never, I guess. I actually cooked this on labor day. It was a pretty busy week and I didn't get a chance to put it up. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!!

We cook pork loin fairly often. Everytime I take a meat run I pick up a whole loin. I'll cut most of it into chops but I always leave a third to a half of it whole for a nice roast. I used to smoke these all the time (still do, occasionally), but I've found that I like to do them indirect on the kettle a little better. They're lean, so they cook better at a little bit higher heat, and they'll cook quicker on the kettle, too. I start by scoring the top of the loin and sprinkling with kosher salt and cracked pepper.

Like I said, loins are pretty lean, so I top them with bacon when I cook them. The bacon fat will render and kinda baste the loin as it cooks. Besides, smoked/grilled bacon is fantastic!!

We decided to cook some veggies in foil on the grill since it would take 45 minutes or so to cook the loin. In a bowl I added just enough Italian dressing, salt, and pepper to coat the veggies. Use whatever kind of veggies you like, but this time we used onions (red and white), mushrooms, squash, and zucchini. Make a boat out of foil and just wrap the veggies in there to cook.


You can see that I put the charcoal all on one side of the kettle this time (instead of on both sides; scroll down for example) I did this simply because I needed a little bit more room for the big pile of veggies. It will cook the same either way.


I cook my loins to 150 degrees, then pull them off the grill to rest. The temp will continue to rise a bit and will end up between 155 and 160 degrees. I let them rest at least 15 minutes before slicing. The bacon usually ends up a little better looking than this. It was pretty thin, so it curled up as it cooked. It was still mighty good, though.


In addition to veggies, we baked a couple potatoes. Instead of the usual butter, sour cream, etc. we went with cheese and salsa. It was some might fine eats, if I do say so myself.

A&P Lawsuit

This is pretty ridiculous. I saw on Techdirt last week about the lawsuit. Then, today I saw more about it at WhitetrashBBQ. Whitetrash sent a letter to A&P, which I'll be doing right after I finish this post. I encourage you to send an email to apcustomerrel@aptea.com as well. Evidently they are suing these kids for a million bucks. Like Whitetrash said, you would not have even known this was an A&P if not for the lawsuit. What a bunch of idiots at A&P. The really funny thing is that the video isn't that funny. Nice editing though. Anyway, here's the video: