Mexican street corn - My way

Mexican street corn

During the summer we love to eat corn on the cob and we really enjoy Mexican street corn. We often have my mom eating with us and she can't eat corn on the cob anymore, but enjoys the corn. This is how I make our Mexican street corn so she can enjoy it too. You can make it on the stove top or the grill. The grill adds a bit more smokey flavor to it. 

Ingredients:

• Frozen corn - 1 bag
• mayonnaise - 1/4 cup
• Chili powder - 2 tsp
• Paprika - 1 tbls
• salt - pinch
• Pepper- 1/4 tsp
• Cojita cheese
• Sometimes BBQ rub - to taste

Start to cook the corn in a pan on the stove top or a foil lined (especially if the basket has large holes in it) veggie basket on the grill. You can get it going in the microwave and then transfer it to either pan too. Stir it often so it doesn't burn. 

Grilling Mexican street corn.

Once it is no longer frozen add the mayonnaise and stir the corn so the mayonnaise coats the kernels. I also add the salt and pepper at this time. You can let it sit on the heat for a bit and cook. I like to get some charred kernels when I do it on the grill. I like the flavor of the roasted corn. 

Once it is heated all the way through add the chili powder and paprika (and rub if you like) and stir it all up to mix the spices through the corn. Let it continue to sit and cook for a few minutes more. 

Add some cojita cheese and stir it again to mix the cheese into the corn. Remove from the heat and put into a bowl to serve. Top it with some more cheese and cilantro, if you like cilantro and serve. 

I find this is a great side for just about anything I cook on the grill. Pork loin, hamburgers, pulled pork, brisket... anything really. If you have left over pork or brisket and make tacos with them, the corn is really good in the tacos or on the side. 

Cooking with Fire! - Contest

Cooking with Fire!

This year I had some t-shirts made for the blog by Kong Screen Printing in Austin, TX, and stickers done at Contagious Graphics in Charlotte, NC. Both are great printers and easy to work with. Because I have a couple extra t-shirts and lots of stickers I'm going to run my first contest.

Head over to facebook.com/bbq4fun, like my page and post your best picture of summer grilling or BBQ. There needs to be food in the picture that has been cooked with fire. There will be two winners; the photo with the most likes and the photo that my esteemed panel of judges (my wife and girls)  like the best. The winners will receive a Q4Fun t-shirt (sizes are limited), a Q4Fun sticker and a baggie of my rub. The contest will run until August 17, 2013 and is only for those in the continental US.

The t-shirt.

The sticker.

The Q Rub

BBQ 101: Cooking Brisket

Brisket is Texas BBQ. It is a big hunk of beef from the chest of a cow. When people think of brisket they usually think of the flat. When I think of brisket I think of a packer. The packer is the flat and the point combined. It makes for some good eating. Im going to tell you how I cook brisket. It works for me and my family and others who have sampled it love it. It is my wife's favorite type of BBQ.

When done correctly the brisket has a nice smokey beef flavor that is awesome. It is also one of the types of BBQ that can go wrong easily. If it is under cooked it is tough and hard to eat. If it is overlooked it is dry and crumbly. Hitting the sweet spot takes some practice.

 

Swine 'n Dine for Charity

Team Swine 'n Dine: Frank Fields, Rob Ford,
Mike Bonn. Not pictured, Preston Cornett.

I received an email from my friend Gwen Poth who requested I check out and review this BBQ team who use their BBQ to raise money for 24 Hours of Booty in Charlotte. I always love it when other BBQers use their ability for good and to raise awareness for a good cause. After all OTT is a great event I help with, so I’m always happy to spread the word for someone else. Rob, the spokes person for the team, and I exchanged a few emails so I could find out about the team. We set up a time for me to meet the team and try some of their porcine product.

The Team
In the emails we sent back and forth, Rob gave me the history of his team, Swine ‘n Dine. It is made up of four members; Rob Ford, Frank Fields, Preston Cornett, and Mike Bonn. They started to cook at their neighborhood festival and sold sandwiches and pork butts and all the proceeds went back to the neighborhood. They really enjoyed cooking together and decided to cook for the neighbors once again. Their neighbors liked what they were cooking and asked if they would do it again for a third year. The team went from cooking 150lbs of pork to 400lbs per cook.

How to: Smoking a Turkey 101

In 2009 a friend gave me an old smoker he never used. This was the start of a beautiful thing at my house. It was a couple weeks before Thanksgiving and I was trying to figure out what to make on it first.

The first cooker.

My wife and I talked about it and decided we would try smoked turkey. I had never smoked anything by myself. It was going to be an adventure. My wife bought two turkeys. I asked, “Why?” Her reply was, “I’ll roast one incase the smoked one doesn’t turn out.” "OK," I thought, "Play it safe so we don’t go hungry on Thanksgiving Day."

The Joy of BBQ

I'm looking forward to this weekend. Saturday I plan to get up around seven, start a fire in the cooker and cook some pork butts and chicken. Some people say, "That's a lot of work for some food." It may be, but I find it enjoyable and relaxing.

My oldest brother is in-town visiting so I promised him and his family some real BBQ. It is a labor of love. Love for my family and love for the experience of BBQing.

There is something about a cooker, fire  and raw meat that just feels so good. BBQ is about the process and the finished product. Maybe it appeals to that primitive man in me. The caveman you might say. Using raw heat to turn a slab of meat into a work of culinary art. Maybe there is some what of a religious experience in it. After all God said that the sacrifices were "a pleasing aroma." (Exodus 29:41). Yeah I know pork is not a kosher meat and never used in sacrifices but when I smell the cooker going that's one of the things it makes me think of.

After the meat is cooked and shared it is nice to know my family and friends are enjoying it. The sounds of good conversation around the table or no sound at all as they eat. Just hanging out with them after a long hot day near the cooker. That is what makes BBQ so great for me.

BBQ is always better when shared with friends and family.

App Review: On the House – Great Backyard Grilling

Creator: CulinartMedia, Inc.
Requirements: Compatible iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later.

Cost: $3.99
Link: Great Grilling

This app is well designed with intuitive navigation and great-tasting recipes that are easy to follow.

My likes:
There are some cool features that make this app shine for me. When I find a recipe I like, I can add it to my favorites, menu or shopping cart. Favorites help you find the recipes you like quicker. The menu helps you put together a menu for a dinner party or a grill night. The shopping cart puts all the ingredients in a list so you can figure out what you need to buy.

Being able to change the number of people cooking for and having the app modify the amounts of ingredients automatically is a great feature for chefs like me who may cook for my wife and kids one night then for the neighborhood block party the next. When the recipe calls for you to cook an item for a set time, you can touch the time in the recipe to open a timer and track your cooking time.

My dislikes:
A grilling app should not tell you to preheat the oven to make ribs. And working with multiple recipes simultaneously means I need multiple timers. Some recipes, for example, have you cooking a sauce on the stove and the meat on the grill. You need to time both. The currently empty video tips section needs to be populated. That would be an excellent addition to the app.

Overall the app is really useful. I recommend it for the recipes and ability to set up menus. The little extras make it nice, but the timers and lack of videos detract from its overall usefulness.

This was a tough decision to rate this app. It is so close to a full rack but in the end it receives a 3/4 rack of ribs on the rib's Gibbs scale*. Multiple timers, videos and turning the ribs recipe into a grill recipe would allow me to change the rating to a full rack.

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I will rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor.

App Review: GrillStar App

Creator: Ryan Michel
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later.

Cost: $.99
Link: GrillStar

Summer is here and it’s time to fire up that grill (unless you’re crazy like me and cook all year round). Time to feed the family in that old-as-time tradition of cooking over an open flame. They want to eat chicken but every time you grill it, you burn it. You want to grill up some fresh veggies but don’t know how long to cook them for. No worries. GrillStar can solve that problem.

This is a great little app for $.99. You can put your meat, seafood or veggies on a virtual grill and a timer is set to remind you when to turn it over or pull it off on your real grill. Remember, “If you’re lookin’, you ain’t cookin’.” This app give you information you need to cook your food correctly on the grill as well as some good grilling tips.

The cook times assume your meat is thawed completely, which it should be when you grill, but if it isn’t you need to take that into consideration. The UI is a little difficult to find where things are, but once you figure it out it isn’t bad.

On the Gibbs Ribs scale* I give this app a 3/4’s rack. It is very useful and well thought out but the UI could use some improvement.


*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I will rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor.