Juicy Lucy Burgers

Wife and I decided to make Juicy Lucy's, grilled asparagus, and sweet potato fries. Enjoy!

Process

1 lb ground beef
few dashes Dizzy Pig Raising the Steaks
few splashes Worcestershire Sauce
3 slices American Cheese

Start by combining the beef, DP Raising the Steaks, and Worcestershire into a medium mixing bowl. Divide each piece of cheese into 4 smaller squares and stack them. Form a thin patty with your hands, place a cheese stack in the middle, and put another thin patty on top. easy!

Grilled the asparagus in a grill basket

Setup the egg direct ~450 degrees and grill each side 4-5 minutes. Once finished, allow to sit a few minutes to avoid hot lava cheese. Final product with fresh jalapenos and toasted wheat buns

Baby Back Ribs

Ribs are my favorite food to smoke and according to my friends I think i'm zero'd in on a few consistently good techniques. The following is only one of the ways i'll do ribs, with additional variations to be posted in the future.

Process

First thing is the rub. This spicy rub is what I use for all pork and crafted it myself. It is pretty simple:

Rub
1 TB light brown sugar
1 TB sugar in the raw
1 TB paprika
1 TB kosher salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp fresh black pepper
1/4 tsp Ancho chili powder
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Mop - mix in a small bowl
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3 TB plain yellow mustard
few splashes of Worcestershire sauce
juice from half lemon

First thing first, pull the membrane off

 Put all rub ingredients into grinder or "food chopper" and smooth it out. As you can see I utilize a mini food processor from Cusinart and it works great.

 Lather the ribs up with plain yellow mustard to allow the rub to adhere.

 Liberally coat the ribs with the rub and allow to sit about 20 minutes. This will create a glaze-like appearance indicating the rub as set into the meat.

 I use a BBQ Guru DigiQ II set at 235 degrees for the cook. I selected about 2-3 good sized chunks of Apple wood and added to the lump. This lasted me the entire smoke.

After two hours on the smoker, Whisk together the Mop recipe above in a small bowl. Using a brush or mop give it a liberal coating every hour. I let the ribs go about 6 hours and they started passing the "bend test." No foil

 Final product!

BONUS - made-from-scratch Jalapeno corn bread
credit: http://www.instructables.com/id/Perfect-Homemade-Cornbread/

1 cup flour
1 cup yellow corn meal
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 large jalapeno diced
2 eggs
1/2 olive oil
Milk as needed

Using a spatula, mix the dry ingredients together into a bowl, then add eggs and oil. It will be pretty dry and lumpy. Once it is mixed together best you can, start adding milk slowly until it reaches a consistency of pancake batter. Add the jalapenos and mix it up. Pour into a greased 9X9 pan and cook 20-25 minutes at 425 degrees.

Super Bowl Korean Wings

This is the best wing recipe i've made in a long time. I fixed them up for the Super Bowl and they went fast. I can't take any credit for this recipe, pulled it straight from a blog that really lays it out nicely. http://www.eatthelove.com/2014/01/korean-bbq-chicken-recipe/

Process

I ended up tripling the recipe since I purchased 6 pounds of wings rather than two which the recipe called for. I also omitted the green onions. Therefore, ended up with the following:

18 cloves minced garlic
3-4 inches of fresh grated ginger
1.5 cups low sodium soy sauce
3 TB rice vinegar
3 TB white sesame seeds
3 TB white sugar
6 medium kiwis - peeled and diced
3 tsp fresh black pepper
6 tsp red pepper flakes
6 lbs chicken wings, mix of drums and flats

Mix everything up into a bowl, and split it evenly between two gallon-sized ziplock bags with 3lbs of wings in each.  Save about a 1/2 to 1 cup for basting/glazing onto the wings towards the end of grilling later.  Let this marinade in the refrigerator for about 6 hours, mixing around whenever you feel like it. 

After 6 hours, I pulled them out of the fridge and moved them to a bowl. Easier to carry outside and transfer to the grill! Discard the marinade that has been mixed with the chicken. Take the 1/2 to 1 cup you set aside, and give it a quick blender pulse to smooth it out. This makes it easier to glaze on later.

Pureed marinade for basting

 I set my egg up direct around ~450 degrees for these guys. I flipped them about 5 minutes each side, giving a baste with the reserved marinade for the last minute. Do not go overboard basting, the soy sauce packs a lot of sodium - you'll give everybody salty wings. I sprinkled on more sesame seeds after they were pulled off the grill, added a nice touch. I will definitely make these again.

Pizza

Nothing beats cooking up pizza on the Egg...It really becomes a social thing, where everybody can make their own and since they take about 3-4 minutes you can crank them out. This particular occasion my wife and I had some friends over and purchased the dough from Minsky's - popular local place here in Kansas City minskys.com. They have a killer honey-wheat crust and for $3 really beats making it yourself. Any legitimate pizza place will sell you dough, I apologize in advance for not having final product pictures - we ate it too fast :)


Process

Start by rolling out the dough - in my case fresh dough from the local pizza joint - thin as you like on parchment paper. We like it very thin. Parchment paper is key to this process. My first go at pizza was an epic failure because transferring pizza from peel to egg meant dropping the entire thing into the coals or tearing it in half. Parchment paper is critical. NOT wax paper - it burns. We are also big fans of Trader Joes dough. If you cut one package in half it will make two thin crust pizzas. Add flour as needed so everything rolls out without sticking.

Stack the rolled dough

We put our ingredients into the bowls for everybody to share. Jalapenos, mushrooms, green pepper, ground beef, pepperoni, and 2-3 bags of cheese

You'll want a pizza stone and peel for the next part. Load up the firebox in the egg about half-way, put the Plate Setter legs down, and place the pizza stone on top of the flat side of the plate setter. I normally let it go wide open (no daisy wheel, vent open) until about 650-700 degrees. Stabilize at high temp for about 15 minutes. 

Before placing the pizza onto the hot stone, cut off the excess parchment paper around the pizza with scissors. Avoids the edges lighting on fire from the heat surrounding the stone!! Time to cook! Put the pizza on, parchment paper and all.

After about one-two minutes, the dough should have firmed up enough to pull the parchment paper out from under the pizza. This is a two man job...one person lift a corner of the dough while the other pulls out the parchment paper from under the pizza. The pizza should sit directly on the stone at this point and cook for another ~2 minutes totalling 4-5 total cook time. It should create a crispy, slightly brick oven, thin crust pizza that will be gone in seconds. I wish I had finishing pictures - it went too fast!

Spatchcock Chicken

I have been smoking and grilling chicken on the BGE for a while, the vast majority are whole chickens indirect @~300 degrees after a 4-8 hour brine. It's hard to top the smoky flavor and tenderness from that process. This time we decided to do one "spatchcock" (removing the backbone and laying flat), resulting in a crispier outside and still very tender. We'll definitely be doing this one again!


Process

Removed the backbone with kitchen shears, and laid flat. There are several good YouTube videos on how to spatchcock a chicken. Took a little pushing to get fully flattened. Coated lightly with vegetable oil.

Added Dizzy Pig Raging River, which has become my go-to for poultry. This seasoning really has no limits - a maple and almost citrus flavor

Direct raised grid @ 375-400 degrees. I actually use the heat deflector from Kamado Joe instead of the BGE Plate Setter which converts nicely into a raised grid setup. 

Just about done, about 155 internal. At this point brushed with Q39 Regular BBQ sauce from Kansas City. This sauce is REALLY good.

After about 5-8 minutes longer to glaze on the grill, the internal was 165 in the breast and ready to pull. Let it rest about 10 minutes

Final product!